|
Mitchell Public Library |
YARP |
| Author | Title | Year | Grade | Summary & Link to Teen Video Book Talk |
| Acompora, Paul | Defining Dulcie | 2006 | Gr. 6-10 | When sixteen-year-old Dulcie’s father dies, her mother makes a decision to move them to California, where Dulcie makes an equally radical decision to steal her dad’s old truck and head back home. |
| Blacker, Terence | Boy2Girl | 2005 | Gr. 7-9 | After the death of his mother, thirteen-year-old Sam comes to live with his cousin and as a prank, he dresses up as a girl for school, but it soon gets out of hand. |
| Fleischman, Sid | Escape: The Story of the Great Houdini | 2006 | Gr. 6-9 | A biography of the magician, ghost chaser, aviator, and king of escape artists whose amazing feats are remembered long after his death in 1926. Profiling his early years, personal life, and great accomplishments in show business, the story of the famous magician, Harry Houdini, comes to life through a review of his greatest tricks and most amazing feats. |
| Giblin, J. | Good Brother, Bad Brother | 2005 | Gr. 6-9 | Most people know the name John Wilkes Booth, but few likely have heard of his elder brother Edwin. Find out about the brothers through first-hand accounts. Learn how alike and how different they were, and how each made a lasting impression on American history. |
| Grant, K. M. | Blood Red Horse | 2005 | Gr. 5-9 | A special horse named Hosanna changes the lives of two English brothers and those around them as they fight with King Richard I against Saladin’s armies during the Third Crusades. |
| Grey, Christopher | Leonardo's Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo Da Vinci's Servant | 2006 | Gr. 6-9 | Fifteen-year-old Giacomo--servant to Leonardo da Vinci--helps his procrastinating master finish painting "The Last Supper" while also trying to find clues to his parentage and pursue his own career as an artist in late fifteenth-century Milan. |
| Hautman, Pete | Rash | 2006 | Gr. 8-12 | In a future society that has decided it would "rather be safe than free," sixteen-year-old Bo’s anger control problems land him in a tundra jail where he survives with the help of his running skills and an artificial intelligence program named Bork. |
| Key, Watt | Alabama Moon | 2006 | Gr. 6-9 | After the death of his father, ten-year-old Moon leaves their forest shelter home and is sent to an Alabama institution, becoming entangled in the outside world he has never known and making good friends, a relentless enemy, and finally a new life. |
| Korman, Gordon | Born to Rock | 2006 | Gr. 7-10 | High school senior Leo Caraway, a conservative Republican, learns that his biological father is a punk rock legend. |
| Lupica, Mike | Heat | 2006 | Gr. 5-8 | Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof. |
| McKinty, Adrian | The Lighthouse Land | 2006 | Gr. 8-12 | Thirteen-year-old Jamie is overjoyed when a bequest sends him and his mother to live on an Irish island, where he and his newfound friend Ramsay travel back in time to help a young girl save her people from certain death. |
| Murdock, Catherine Gilbert. | Dairy Queen | 2006 | Gr. 7-9 | After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school’s rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her. |
| Paterson, Katherine | Bread and Roses, Too | 2006 | Gr. 7-12 | Jake and Rosa, two children, form an unlikely friendship as they try to survive and understand the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. |
| Patterson, James | Maximum Ride : The Angel Experiment | 2005 | Gr. 7-10 | After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "birdkids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose. |
| Pierce, Tamora | Terrier | 2006 | Gr. 7-12 | When sixteen-year-old Beka becomes "Puppy" to a pair of "Dogs," as the Provost’s Guards are called, she uses her police training, natural abilities, and a touch of magic to help them solve the case of a murdered baby in Tortall’s Lower City. |
| Shusterman, Neal | Dread Locks | 2005 | Gr. 7-10 | Accustomed to a carefree existence, fifteen-year-old Parker Baer meets the girl next door and finds his life taking a menacing turn as he begins to absorb some of her terrible powers. |
| Smelcer, John | The Trap | 2006 | Gr. 6-9 | In alternating chapters, seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel, who is better known for brains than brawn, worries about his missing grandfather, and the grandfather, Albert Least-Weasel, struggles to survive, caught in his own steel trap in the Alaskan winter. |
| Stanley, Diane | Bella at Midnight | 2006 | Gr. 5-8 | Raised by peasants, Bella discovers that she is actually the daughter of a knight and finds herself caught up in a terrible plot that will change her life and the kingdom forever. |
| Turner, Ann Warren | Hard Hit | 2006 | Gr. 7-10 | A rising high school baseball star faces his most difficult challenge when his father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. |
| Wilson, Diane Lee | Firehorse | 2006 | Gr. 6-9 | Spirited fifteen-year-old horse lover Rachel Selby determines to become a veterinarian, despite the opposition of her rigid father, her proper mother, and the norms of Boston in 1872, while that city faces a serial arsonist and an epidemic spreading through its firehorse population. |
| AUTHOR | TITLE | Year | Gr. | Summary & Link to Teen Video Book Talk |
| Anderson, Laurie Halse | Twisted | 2007 | Gr. 9-12 | After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts. |
| Bastedo, Jamie | On Thin Ice | 2006 | Gr. 8+ | In spite of its name, no one in the tiny troubled hamlet of Nanurtalik-"the place with polar bears"-can remember seeing a polar bear in decades. The discovery of a teenager's mangled body on a nearby ice road signals the possible return of polar bears, which are being driven to new territories by a drastically changing arctic climate. |
| Carter, Alden R | Love,Football and Other Contact Sports | 2006 | Gr. 8-up | A collection of stories about high school students from one end of the social spectrum to the otherJock to loner, academic snob to outcast, Carter explores and shatters the stereotypes behind the relationships, friends, rumors, peer pressure, sports, bullies, and other assorted forms of mental anguish that come with high school. . |
| Dessen, Sarah | Just Listen | 2006 | Gr. 9-up | Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life. |
| Deuker, Carl | Runner | 2005 | Gr. 7-up | Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk. |
| D'Orso, Michael | Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska | 2006 | Gr. 9-12 | "Set in the remote Arctic recesses of Alaska, the village of Fort Yukon is home to six hundred people. Overwhelmingly populated by Athabascan Gwich'in Natives, Fort Yukon exists almost exclusively in the margins of American culture. The tiny population and vanishing cultural heritage of this town have one powerful link to mainstream America: their high school basketball team." |
| Garden, Nancy | Endgame | 2006 | Gr. 9-12 | Fifteen-year-old Gray Wilton, bullied at school and ridiculed by an unfeeling father for preferring drums to hunting, goes on a shooting rampage at his high school. |
| Going, K. L. | Saint Iggy | 2006 | Gr. 9-12 | Iggy Corso, who lives in city public housing, is caught physically and spiritually between good and bad when he is kicked out of high school, goes searching for his missing mother, and causes his friend to get involved with the same dangerous drug dealer who deals to his parents. |
| Hall, Barbara | The Noah Confessions | 2007 | Gr. 9-12 | Instead of a car for her sixteenth birthday, Lynnie receives a manuscript from her father in which her deceased mother writes about family secrets, helping Lynnie to understand more about her parents and the complexity of growing up. |
| Klass, David. | Firestorm | 2006 | Gr. 7-12 | After learning that he has been sent from the future for a special purpose, eighteen-year-old Jack receives help from an unusual dog and a shape-shifting female fighter. |
| Leavitt, Martine | Keturah and Lord Death | 2006 | Gr. 8-12 | When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old Keturah while she is lost in the King’s Forest, she charms him with her story and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love. |
| McCormick, Patricia | Sold | 2006 | Gr. 9-12 | Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape. |
| Pfeffer, Susan Beth | Life As We Knew It | 2006 | Gr. 8-12 | Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family’s struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. |
| Simmons, Michael | Finding Lubchenko | 2005 | Gr. 7-10 | When his father is framed for murder and bioterrorism, high-school junior Evan, using clues from a stolen laptop, travels from Seattle to Paris with two friends to find the real culprit. |
| Tharp, Tim | Knights of the Hill Country | 2006 | Gr. 8-12 | In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Greene finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football. |
| Vaught, Susan | Trigger | 2006 | Gr. 9-12 | Teenager Jersey Hatch must work through his extensive brain damage to figure out why he decided to shoot himself. |
| Volponi, Paul | Black & White | 2005 | Gr. 9-12 | Two star high school basketball players, one black and one white, experience the justice system differently after committing a crime together and getting caught. |
| Werlin, Nancy | Rules of Survival | 2006 | Gr. 8-12 | Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother. |
| Zarr, Sara | Story of a Girl | 2007 | Gr. 9-12 | In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna’s life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness. |
| Zusak, Markus | The Book Thief | 2006 | Gr. 9-12 | Set during World War II in Germany, Zusaks groundbreaking novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing, encounters something she cant resist: books. Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. |
Each year the Young Adult Reading Program (YARP) Committee of the South Dakota Library Association publishes a list to promote quality literature and to help South Dakota teachers and librarians in selecting and promoting books for adolescents.
The books are selected from among the many young adult and adult books that have received positive reviews by national reviewing periodicals. The grade attached to each title is the suggested grade level from the reviewed source.
The Middle School list is recommended for grades 5-12. The High School list is recommended for grades 9-12.