By title

By author

Alison DeCamp

• Across the Nightingale Floor, Tales of the Otori, Book 1
• Lian Hearn

• Kind of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fantasy set in an alternate Japan where people can have superpowers. It’s really well-done fantasy.

• Knucklehead
• Jon Scieszka

• A fantastic graphic novel about Jon’s boyhood in Flint, Michigan, where my husband is also from. It’s funny and real and mostly funny.

• Out from Boneville, Boneville Series, #1
• Jeff Smith

• These are so imaginative, innocent, and creative. I am a big fan of smart graphic novels and how they make us think.

• The Eddie Dickens Trilogy
• Philip Ardagh

• There’s a stuffed stoat in these books. I’m not even sure what that is, but do I really need to say more?

• The Willoughbys
• Lois Lowry

• Same Lois Lowry as THE GIVER, but a completely different kind of story, one where the kids are super smart and the adults need to get a clue.

• Winger
• Andrew Smith

• My 16 y.o. has read and reread this book about a 14 y.o. rugby player. It’s a story about all the confusion that’s part and parcel of growing up while simultaneously injecting humor and love and redemption into the entire mix.

• Nicholas
• Jean-Jacques Sempe

• Nicholas is irreverent and slightly naughty and a bit clueless but always funny.

• How They Croaked, The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous
• Georgia Bragg

• (by Georgia Bragg & Kevin O’Malley)

  Just like the title says, this is a book about how famous people died. But really it’s a history book.

• We Were Liars
• E.Lockhart

• I read this book in three hours. Granted, I told my family I wasn’t feeling well so they actually left me alone for that amount of time, but I devoured this book. There’s an unreliable narrator and a shocking ending and a slew of open-ended questions that we still argue about in our house.

Michael Northrop

• Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal
• Ben Macintyre

• "Fantastic World War II nonfiction: a high-stakes British spy thriller that just happens to be true."

• Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
• Stephan Pastis

• "Hilarious, endearing, and includes a polar bear - what more do you want? This book made me wish I could draw (or at least doodle really well)."

• Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
• H.P. Lovecraft

• "Lovecraft's stories are profoundly weird, insanely good, and they changed horror writing forever, and for the better (which is to say, weirder)."

• Rumble Fish
• S.E. Hinton

• "A short, tough book that hits hard and leaves a mark. Not as famous as The Outsiders, but it had just as big of an impact on me. It was the first novel I reread when I decided to write YA."

   

• A Separate Peace
• John Knowles

• "Darn near perfect: a little masterpiece that quietly tackles the big questions."

Patrick Jones

• Coyote Steals the Blanket, A Ute Tale

• A trickster tale about a coyote, a blanket, and a rock. Hot times in the desert.

• Dangerous Girls

• Or anything by Stine. The man's a genius. Don't believe me: this is about twin teen girls vampires one hot summer. Do the math.

• Hidden Talents

• This has it all: humor, adventure, smart mouth teen boys, stupid rules to rebel against, and fire.

• Scholastic Book Of Lists

• When you don’t have time for chapters or even paragraphs, choose bullets. Bullet points that is.

• Scary Stories 3

• Nothing wrong with the first two volumes, but this is "just delicious!" Don't read this during lunch or before or after.

• Strong to the Hoop

• A 10-year-old gets a chance to play with the big boys. Read this and you'll feel the sweat fly off the pages.

• The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music

• By the Rolling Stone editors. An earlier edition of this book was my Bible at age 17. Everything you need to know.

Jason Reynolds

• The Young Landlords
• Walter Dean Myers

• It's a brilliantly gritty story about a bunch of kids who get swindled into taking over a slum building. Super creative, yet totally feasible in New York City.

• Kira-Kira
• Cynthia Kadohata

• The story takes place in the sixties in the segregated south. Black people know where they stand. White people know where they stand. But what about a Japanese family?

• Noggin
• John Corey Whaley

• Smart and hilarious story about a young man who is dying and his parents decide to cryogenically freeze his head. A few years later, he's back from the dead. And he's still in high school.

• The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
• Walter Mosley

• One of the gems that flew under the radar because Mosely is so prolific. But it's a sweet, yet biting story about an elder man, Ptolemy Grey, suffering from dementia.

• Erasure
• Percival Everett

• It's a weird book about a stuffy writer and his hatred for the industry. His frustration with his agent wanting him to write a "sellable" book pushes him to pen "street fiction" just as a middle finger to the corporate publishing structure. Madness ensues, and it's downright hilarious.

Jeff Zentner

• The First Time She Drowned
• Kerry Kletter

• "An absolutely gorgeous, lyrical, and unflinching story about a girl escaping from under the thumb of a toxic mother and living her own life."

• How to Hang a Witch
• Adriana Mather

• "A delightfully spooky, twist-turny, and gripping mystery set in a haunted present-day Salem, Massachusetts."

• The Love That Split the World
• Emily Henry

• "A beautiful and romantic time travel story set in small-town Kentucky."

• Kids of Appetite
• David Arnold

• (out in September) "A hilarious, quirky, and warm story about murder, first love, and families of choice."

• Everything, Everything
• Nicola Yoon

• "A sweet and swoony story about a girl who's allergic to the world."

• Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
• Becky Albertalli

• "A hilarious, warm, and wise coming-out and coming-of-age story."

• More Happy Than Not
• Adam Silvera

• "A heartbreaking story about a young man running from his own memory."