YA Literature Lists

There is plenty of excellent YA literature out there from Caudill Award winners to Newbery Honor books and more. Here are a few lists to help you find the books fast.

As I mentioned in my article this week, Young Adult Literature, the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award is a great resource when you're looking for excellent literature for middle school students. It's not just teachers who think this way either; kids really do like the books! In fact, today I went onto the website for my local library to check the availability for the 2007 books. I want to read as many as I can before the school year starts so I can give some book talks to my students right away and get YA literature in their hands as soon as possible. I entered all 20 titles nominated for the 2007 Caudill Award and not one was available. All of the books are currently checked out! The library has several copies of many of the books, but there was literally not one book available for me to check out. I reserved as many as possible, but I am second and third in line for lots of them. Time for Plan B, I decided.

I went back to some of the Caudill nominees from previous years, also found at Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award, that I never got a chance to read-since there are 20 titles from every year since 1988-and checked out a few of those. I decided to look into a few other lists, as well. I went to the Association for Library Services to Children website and found two helpful lists. The first is a list of the 2006 ALSC Award Winners. This list includes a myriad of award winners like the Newbery Honor Books, the Sibert Honor Books, the Belpré Author Honor Books and more. The second list is composed of 2006 Notable Children's Books. This list provides plenty of titles and is divided into books for younger readers, middle readers, older readers, and readers of all ages.

Although there will be some overlap between these lists, I definitely have a jumping off point and am anxious to find some new YA literature to recommend to my seventh-grade students in the fall. They are required to have an "independent reading book" with them at all times, and I feel much better knowing that they are carrying around good books that they actually like-as opposed to bringing the same book with them to every class for months just to keep us off their backs. I know there are lots of great lists out there that could help even more with book suggestions, lessons, activities, and projects. Feel free to share any of your resources for YA literature with us at anytime!