Tuesday, March 03, 2009

100 Teen Books teens love and adults who serve teens should know about

My librarian buddy Karen (not the one who posts here) created this meme of 100 teen titles. I thought I'd post it here to see what you think of the books! Do you think they should be in an essential list of 100 titles? How many of them have you read? I challenge each of our teen librarians to blog about which ones they've read and the ones they're embarrassed to admit that they haven't!

So here's Karen's post from Facebook:

With the help of some of my teen librarian friends, I've compiled a list of 100 Teen Books teens love and adults who serve teens should know about. Here it is! Feel free to gank it for your own purposes.The following list of books teens love, books teens should read, and books adults who serve teens should know about was compiled IN ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC MANNER and should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

Instructions:Put an "X" next to the books you've read
Put a "+" next to the books you LOVE
Put a "*" next to the books you plan on reading
Tally your "X"s at the bottom
Share with your friends!

1. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams X
2. Kit's Wilderness / David Almond
3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie
4. Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson X
5. Feed / M.T. Anderson X
6. Flowers in the Attic / V.C. Andrews X
7. 13 Reasons Why / Jay Asher
8. Am I Blue? / Marion Dane Bauer (editor)
9. Audrey Wait! / Robin Benway
10. Weetzie Bat / Francesca Lia Block X
11. Tangerine / Edward Bloor
12. Forever / Judy Blume X
13. What I Saw and How I Lied / Judy Blundell
14. Tyrell / Coe Booth
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Ann Brashares X
16. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray X
17. The Princess Diaries / Meg Cabot X
18. The Stranger / Albert Camus X (in French!)
19. Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card X
20. Postcards from No Man's Land / Aidan Chambers
21. Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky
22. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
23. Gingerbread / Rachel Cohn
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist / Rachel Cohn and David Levithan X
25. Artemis Fowl (series) / Eoin Colfer X
26. The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins
27. The Midwife's Apprentice / Karen Cushman X
28. The Truth About Forever / Sarah Dessen
29. Little Brother / Cory Doctorow
30. A Northern Light / Jennifer Donnelly X
31. Tears of a Tiger / Sharon Draper X
32. The House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer X
33. Breathing Underwater / Alex Flinn
34. Stardust / Neil Gaiman X (plus the comic version!)
35. Annie on My Mind / Nancy Garden
36. What Happened to Cass McBride / Gail Giles X
37. Fat Kid Rules the World / K.L. Going (half of it... does that count?)
38. Lord of the Flies / William Golding X
39. Looking for Alaska / John Green X
40. Bronx Masquerade / Nikki Grimes
41. Out of the Dust / Karen Hesse
42. Hoot / Carl Hiaasen X
43. The Outsiders / S.E. Hinton X
44. Crank / Ellen Hopkins
45 The First Part Last / Angela Johnson X
46. Blood and Chocolate / Annette Curtis Klause X
47. Arrow's Flight / Mercedes Lackey
48. Hattie Big Sky / Kirby Larson
49. To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee
50. Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan
51. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / E. Lockhart
52. The Giver / Lois Lowry
53. Number the Stars / Lois Lowry X
54. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie / David Lubar X
55. Inexcusable / Chris Lynch X
56. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things / Carolyn Mackler X
57. Dragonsong / Anne McCaffrey
58. White Darkness / Geraldine McCaughrean
59. Sold / Patricia McCormick
60. Jellicoe Road / Melina Marchetta
61. Wicked Lovely / Melissa Marr
62. Twilight / Stephenie Meyer X
63. Dairy Queen / Catherine Murdoch X
64. Fallen Angels / Walter Dean Myers
65. Monster / Walter Dean Myers X
66. Step From Heaven / An Na
67. Mama Day / Gloria Naylor
68. The Keys to the Kingdom (series) / Garth Nix X
69. Sabriel / Garth Nix X
70. Airborn / Kenneth Oppel
71. Eragon / Christopher Paolini X
72. Hatchet / Gary Paulsen
73. Life As We Knew It / Susan Beth Pfeffer X
74. The Golden Compass / Phillip Pullman X
75. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging / Louise Rennison
76. The Lightning Thief / Rick Riordan X
77. Always Running: La Vida Loca / Luis Rodriguez
78. how i live now / Meg Rosoff
79. Harry Potter (series) / J.K. Rowling X
80. Holes / Louis Sachar
81. Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger X
82. Push / Sapphire X
83. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi X
84. Unwind / Neil Shusterman
85. Coldest Winter Ever / Sister Souljah X
86. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli
87. Chanda's Secrets / Allan Stratton
88. Tale of One Bad Rat / Brian Talbot X
89. Rats Saw God / Rob Thomas X
90. Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
91. Stuck in Neutral / Terry Trueman
92. Gossip Girl / Cecily Von Ziegesar
93. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld
94. Every Time a Rainbow Dies / Rita Williams-Garcia
95. Pedro and Me / Judd Winick X
96. Hard Love / Ellen Wittlinger X
97. American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang X
98. Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin X
99. I am the Messenger / Markus Zusak X
100. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak X

I read 51 of the books! Wow, I was surprised by how many I had read. Plus, I disagree with a few of them...

So let's see if Karen can beat me--I'm sure she can!

2 comments:

Karen said...

The beauty of a completely unscientific list of 100 books is, it's completely subjective. The ten-or-so Facebooking librarians who gave me suggestions thought these were books their teens either love or should read, and there are some that I don't really agree with as well. There are also some things missing, that I didn't think of until after I sent it out -- for example, there's two Markus Zusak books (<3) but no Crutcher!!

Karen B-R

Merideth said...

Ha-Ha! I got 75!

Susan got 54! We beat you.

I'm sure Karen can beat us both.