By title

By author

Jeff Zentner

• The First Time She Drowned
• Kerry Kletter

• “An absolutely gorgeous, lyrical, and unflinching story about a girl escaping from under the thumb of a toxic mother and living her own life.”

• How to Hang a Witch
• Adriana Mather

• “A delightfully spooky, twist-turny, and gripping mystery set in a haunted present-day Salem, Massachusetts.”

• The Love That Split the World
• Emily Henry

• “A beautiful and romantic time travel story set in small-town Kentucky.”

• Kids of Appetite
• David Arnold

• (out in September) “A hilarious, quirky, and warm story about murder, first love, and families of choice.”

• Everything, Everything
• Nicola Yoon

• “A sweet and swoony story about a girl who’s allergic to the world.”

• Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
• Becky Albertalli

• “A hilarious, warm, and wise coming-out and coming-of-age story.”

• More Happy Than Not
• Adam Silvera

• “A heartbreaking story about a young man running from his own memory.”

Patrick Jones

• Coyote Steals the Blanket, A Ute Tale

• A trickster tale about a coyote, a blanket, and a rock. Hot times in the desert.

• Dangerous Girls

• Or anything by Stine. The man's a genius. Don't believe me: this is about twin teen girls vampires one hot summer. Do the math.

• Hidden Talents

• This has it all: humor, adventure, smart mouth teen boys, stupid rules to rebel against, and fire.

• Scholastic Book Of Lists

• When you don’t have time for chapters or even paragraphs, choose bullets. Bullet points that is.

• Scary Stories 3

• Nothing wrong with the first two volumes, but this is "just delicious!" Don't read this during lunch or before or after.

• Strong to the Hoop

• A 10-year-old gets a chance to play with the big boys. Read this and you'll feel the sweat fly off the pages.

• The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music

• By the Rolling Stone editors. An earlier edition of this book was my Bible at age 17. Everything you need to know.

Gordon Korman

• The most action, the best gadgets. Move over 007.
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
• I've heard all the haters: "Too silly, too British." I don't care. This stuff rocks.
• Feed
• This book reminds me of how it felt to be a teenager discovering really cool science fiction.
• Into Thin Air, A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

• My favorite Everest book; my favorite adventure book.

• The Great Brain, Great Brain Series
• This was the series that taught me to love middle-grade fiction. A tween swindler back in the days when a silver dollar was serious coin.
• One Knee Equals Two Feet
• The lesser-known of Madden's awesome football books. I read it first, and still love it best.

Michael Buckley

• The Outsiders
• S.E. Hinton

• A timeless story of outcasts versus the privileged. Exciting and heartbreaking — Hinton should be applauded for understanding the mind of a guy so well.

• All Star Superman Books 1 and 2
• Frank Quitely

• Lex Luthor finally finds a way to kill Superman and the Big Blue Boy Scout prepares for his death with a shocking ending no one could have seen.

• Lord of the Flies
• William Golding

• A ship full of children from an all boys' school crashes on the beach of a deserted island. Unfortunately, it isn't long before the kids stop working together and break up into tribes with dark and deadly results.

• Pinocchio
• Carlo Collodi

• Most people have seen the movie but few have read the book and that’s a shame. Pinocchio is a walking nightmare and hilarious.

• The Graveyard Book
• Neil Gaiman

• An adaptation of the Jungle Book but instead of a boy being raised by wolves, he's reared by ghosts in an abandoned cemetery. It's chilling and dark, yet a powerful lesson on how a boy becomes a man.

Jason Reynolds

• The Young Landlords
• Walter Dean Myers

• It's a brilliantly gritty story about a bunch of kids who get swindled into taking over a slum building. Super creative, yet totally feasible in New York City.

• Kira-Kira
• Cynthia Kadohata

• The story takes place in the sixties in the segregated south. Black people know where they stand. White people know where they stand. But what about a Japanese family?

• Noggin
• John Corey Whaley

• Smart and hilarious story about a young man who is dying and his parents decide to cryogenically freeze his head. A few years later, he's back from the dead. And he's still in high school.

• The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
• Walter Mosley

• One of the gems that flew under the radar because Mosely is so prolific. But it's a sweet, yet biting story about an elder man, Ptolemy Grey, suffering from dementia.

• Erasure
• Percival Everett

• It's a weird book about a stuffy writer and his hatred for the industry. His frustration with his agent wanting him to write a "sellable" book pushes him to pen "street fiction" just as a middle finger to the corporate publishing structure. Madness ensues, and it's downright hilarious.