This past week, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), named its 2010 list of Best Books for Young Adults.
This week, Novel Novice will be featuring the top 10, so here are the titles for day four:
The Orange Houses by Paul Griffin
Summary:
Meet Tamika Sykes—Mik to her friends (if she had any). She’s hearing impaired and way too smart for her West Bronx high school. She copes by reading lips and selling homework answers, and looks forward to the time each day when she can be alone in her room drawing. She’s a tough girl who never gets close to anyone, until she meets Fatima, a teenage refugee who sells newspapers on Mik’s block. Both Mik and Fatima unite in their efforts to befriend Jimmi, a homeless vet who is shunned by the rest of the community.
The events that follow when these three outcasts converge will break open their close-knit community and change the lives of those living in the Orange Houses in explosive and unexpected ways.
Awards:
- American Library Association Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults
- TAYSHAS High School Reading List (2010)
The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks
Summary:
Nina Harrison became a vampire in 1973, when she was fifteen, and she hasn’t aged a day since then. But she hasn’t had any fun, either; she still lives with her mum, and the highlight of her sickly, couchbound life is probably her Tuesday-night group meeting, which she spends with a miserable bunch of fellow sufferers, being lectured at.
But then one of the group is mysteriously turned to ashes . . . and suddenly they’re all under threat. That’s when Nina decides to prove that every vampire on earth isn’t a weak, pathetic loser. Along with her friend Dave, she hunts down the culprit ─ and soon finds herself up against some gun-toting werewolf traffickers who’ll stop at nothing.
Can a bunch of feeble couch potatoes win a fight like this? Is there more to your average vampire than meets the eye?
Awards:
- American Library Association Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults
See our previews posts on YALSA’s 2010 Top Books for Teens:
Novel Novice 