The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Native American is the school mascot.

Absolutely Positively Not by David LaRochelle
Chronicles a teenage boy's humorous attempts to fit in at his Minnesota high school by becoming a macho, girl-loving, "Playboy" pinup-displaying heterosexual.

American Born Chinese by Gene Yang
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture

Boot Camp by Todd Strasser
After ignoring several warnings to stop dating his teacher, Garrett is sent to Lake Harmony, a boot camp that uses unorthodox and brutal methods to train students to obey their parents

The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart
Ruby Oliver, a moderately popular fifteen-year-old who has suddenly become a social pariah, begins seeing a psychiatrist and makes a list of all her past boyfriends in an attempt to understand where her life went wrong.

Copper Sun by Sharon Draper
Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.

Epic by Conor Kostick
On New Earth, a world based on a video role-playing game, fourteen-year-old Erik persuades his friends to aid him in some unusual gambits in order to save Erik's father from exile and safeguard the futures of each of their families

Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
After being expelled from a fancy boarding school, Cyd Charisse's problems with her mother escalate after Cyd falls in love with a sensitive surfer and is subsequently sent from San Francisco to New York City to spend time with her biological father

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada's Aspen Springs mental hospital after each has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt
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.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
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.

Notes From the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick
After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

Plain J.A.N.E.S. by Cecil Castellucci
After a bombing in the city, Jane's parents move to a suburb where she befriends three outcasts--all named Jane--and starts a group called People Loving Art in Neighborhoods, which tries to enrich their community with art but instead is viewed as a threat.

Right Behind You by Gail Giles
After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in Indiana with his father and stepmother under a different name, but has trouble fitting in and finds there are still problems to deal with from his childhood.

Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi
While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell J.R.'s father and the police what really happened

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss
Fourteen-year-old Isabella is a typical teenager. She is concerned with friends, school, and gaining weight until the fateful morning that she discovers the enlarged glands in her neck. With the subsequent diagnosis of stage-four Hodgkin's lymphoma, she enters the netherworld of cancer.

Sold by Patricia McCormick
Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old from a poor mountain village in Nepal, gets a job thinking she is being hired as a maid. Instead, she is forced into prostitution in India when her stepfather "trades" her for 800 rupees.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
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.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.

Georgia Peach Award Winner 2007-2008:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Meyer has achieved quite a feat by making this book completely human and believable. She begins with a familiar YA premise (the new kid in school), and lulls us into thinking this will be just another realistic young adult novel. Bella has come to the small town of Forks on the gloomy Olympic Peninsula to be with her father. At school, she wonders about a group of five remarkably beautiful teens, who sit together in the cafeteria but never eat. As she grows to know, and then love, Edward, she learns their secret. They are all rescued vampires, part of a family headed by saintly Carlisle, who has inspired them to renounce human prey. For Edward's sake they welcome Bella, but when a roving group of tracker vampires fixates on her, the family is drawn into a desperate pursuit to protect the fragile human in their midst. The precision and delicacy of Meyer's writing lifts this wonderful novel beyond the limitations of the horror genre to a place among the best of YA fiction.

Georgia Peach Award Honor Book 2007-2008:

I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You
by Ally Carter

If youre a brilliant 15-year-old girl, why be a cheerleader when you can be a spy? Cammie Morgan is enrolled in Gallagher Academy, a secret CIA school whose 7th-10th-grade girls are fluent in 14 different languages and take classes in covert operations. Narrator Rene Raudman is as gifted as any Gallagher girl as she jumps into their boots to romp through the raucous yet surprisingly moving adventures of Cammie, tough-Brit Bex, and Southern-belle Liz. How Cammie and crew pass a dangerous final exam and how Cammie balances spying and her romance with a normal guy make for an offbeat, imaginative title.

Click on the image to read Chapter 1 of Jude

Georgia Peach Award Honor Book 2007-2008:

Peeps by Scott Westerfield

In Westerfeld's latest smart, urbane fantasy, parasite positives, or "peeps," are maniacal cannibals that cause illness. College freshman Cal was lucky: he contracted the sexually transmitted disease during a one-night stand, but it never developed into its full-blown form. Now he works for an underground bureau in Manhattan that tracks down peeps. Apart from the cravings for rare meat and enforced celibacy (turning lovers into monsters is "not an uplifting thing"), life is okay--until a hip, cute journalism student intensifies Cal's yearnings for companionship. Complicating matters are indications that peeps have an urgent evolutionary purpose. Breezy essays on parasitology feel a bit intrusive, and the plot ultimately spirals into B-movie absurdity. But a great many YAs, particularly those who relished M. T. Anderson's Thirsty and Annette Curtis Klause' Blood and Chocolate (both 1997)will marvel at Westerfeld's plausible integration of science and legend.

Click on the image to listen to an audio clip of Elsewhere

Georgia Peach Book Awards for Teen Readers
2008-2009 Nominees