Skin Deep by E.M. Crane
273 pages; 2008

If all the world's a stage, Andrea Anderson is sitting in the audience. In the social hierarchy she is a Nothing, and at home her mother runs the show. All Andrea has to do is show up every day and life basically plays out as scripted.

Then one day Andrea accepts a job. Honora Menapace - a reclusive neighbor - is sick. As in every other aspect of her life, Andrea's role is clear: Honora's garden must be taken care of and her pottery finished, and someone needs to feed her dog, Zena. But what starts out as a simple job yanks Andrea's back-row seat out from under her. Life is no longer predictable, and nothing is what it seems. Light is dark, villains are heroes, and what she once saw as ugly is too beautiful for words. Andrea must face the fact that life at first glance doesn't even crack the surface.

Winner of Delacorte's 2008 First YA Novel Contest

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The Whirlwind by Carol Matas
128 pages; 2007

It is 1941. Fourteen-year-old Ben Friedman flees the horrors of Nazi Germany with his parents and his sister, leaving behind his grandparents, his friends, his home. They make a difficult journey over land and sea all the way to Japan and then to America. In Seattle, Ben dares to hope that he will finally be safe. He finds a friend in John, a Japanese-American boy, but then comes the attack on Pearl Harbor and everything changes. Fear begins to grow in Ben, fear that it is all happening again. Where can he be safe? What should he do? He dreams of Canada, thinking it a haven, only to find that he has nowhere to turn, nowhere to run. Perhaps safety is not where or even what he thinks it is. Perhaps life is not what he imagined at all. ~ Publisher's Description

McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award
Sydney Taylor Book Award - Notable Book for Older Readers

 

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Seek by Paul Fleischman
167 pages; 2001

Assigned to write an autobiography, high-school senior Robert Radkovitz instead creates a sound portrait of his life as he remembers it. Looking back, he hears his mother's singing, his grandmother's mysteries, Mexican soap operas, Poe, poetry, and, most cherished, the voice of his absent father from a single tape of one of his radio shows.

Told in a collage of voices, Seek describes Rob's search for his father, a search pursued not through San Francisco's streets, but through the labyrinth of the airwaves. Psychic readers, baseball announcers, pirate DJs, friends, and teachers join a rich, ringing aural autobiography that's as joyfully comic as it is compelling. ~ Publisher's Description

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

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Define Normal by Julie Ann Peters
196 pages; 2000

When she agrees to meet with Jasmine as a peer counselor at their middle school, Antonia never dreams that this girl with the black lipstick and pierced eyebrow will end up helping her deal with the serious problems she faces at home and become a good friend.

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

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