Yesterday the winners of the 2012 ALA Youth Media awards were announced. These awards are nominated and decided upon by a variety of librarians. The winners and runner-ups, if the DeKalb Library System currently owns them, are listed below. If you are looking for something new to read, you might check them out. I know I will be placing a few on request. Let us know what you think of the books selected.

Alex Award (Books written for adults but with teen appeal.)

In Zanesville: a novel by Jo Ann Beard

Along with her best friend, the fourteen-year-old narrator navigates a 1970s American girlhood, including challenges from popular girls and the first hints of womanhood.

The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser

Some walked across deserts and mountains to get here. Others flew in on planes. One arrived after escaping in a suitcase. And some won’t say how they got here.

These are “the new kids”: new to America and all the routines and rituals of an American high school, from lonely first days to prom. They attend International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, which is like most high schools in some ways—its halls are filled with students gossiping, joking, flirting, and pushing the limits of the school’s dress code—but all of the students are recent immigrants learning English. Together, they come from more than forty-five countries and speak more than twenty-eight languages.

The Night Circus by Erin Morganstein

Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.

Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson

Two decades into the future humans are battling for their very survival when a powerful computer goes rogue, and all the machines on earth rebel against their human controllers.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

The talk funny girl: a novel byRoland Merullo

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again.  For seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with her own home, every day.

Michael L. Printz Award (A book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.)

Where things come back: a novel by John Corey Whaley

Seventeen-year-old Cullen’s summer in Lily, Arkansas, is marked by his cousin’s death by overdose, an alleged spotting of a woodpecker thought to be extinct, failed romances, and his younger brother’s sudden disappearance.

Honor books:

Why we broke up by Daniel Handler

Sixteen-year-old Min Green writes a letter to Ed Slaterton in which she breaks up with him, documenting their relationship and how items in the accompanying box, from bottle caps to a cookbook, foretell the end.

The Returning by Christine Hinwood

When the twelve-year war between the Uplanders and Downlanders is over and Cam returns home to his village, questions dog him, from how he lost an arm to why he was the only one of his fellow soldiers to survive, such that he must leave until his own suspicions are resolved.

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

In small-town Australia, teens Jasper and Charlie form an unlikely friendship when one asks the other to help him cover up a murder until they can prove who is responsible

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stievater

Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.

William C. Morris Award (A debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature.)

Where things come back: a novel by John Corey Whaley

Seventeen-year-old Cullen’s summer in Lily, Arkansas, is marked by his cousin’s death by overdose, an alleged spotting of a woodpecker thought to be extinct, failed romances, and his younger brother’s sudden disappearance.

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