The 2016 Teens’ Top Ten nominations are here! Read on to see the 26 nominated titles and download the annotated 2016 Teens’ Top Ten Nominations (PDF).
Teens’ Top Ten is a “teen choice” list, where teens nominate and choose their favorite books from the previous year. Nominations are posted on Support Teen Literature Day during National Library Week, and teens across the country vote on their favorite titles each year.
Readers ages twelve to eighteen will vote online throughout August and September; the winners will be announced during Teen Read Week in October.
Members of the CA Reading Society can borrow these and other library titles for the summer; see Mr. Bateman for details!
The 2016 Nominees
Linked titles are already available in the CA Library collection; the rest will be added soon! Follow the link to connect to the catalog, see additional details and to check availability. You can also download an annotated list (PDF) of the 26 nominees.
Baker, Chandler. Alive (Disney/Hyperion) — After receiving a heart transplant, seventeen-year-old Stella throws herself into her new life, but her recovery is marred with strange side effects and hallucinations. When she meets Levi Zin, a mysterious new boy at her Seattle prep school, Stella soon realizes that she and Levi have more in common than she could ever imagine.
Bardugo, Leigh. Six of Crows (Macmillan/Henry Holt & Co.) — Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction–if they don’t kill each other first.
Black, Holly. The Darkest Part of the Forest (Little, Brown & Co.) — In the town of Fairfold, where humans and fae exist side by side, a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives awakes after generations of sleep in a glass coffin in the woods, causing Hazel to be swept up in new love, shift her loyalties, feel the fresh sting of betrayal, and to make a secret sacrifice to the faerie king.
Boecker, Virginia. The Witch Hunter (Little, Brown & Co.) — Set in an alternative 16th-century England, Elizabeth Grey is the only girl in the king’s elite group of witch hunters. When she’s framed for being a witch herself, Elizabeth finds freedom at the hands of the world’s most wanted wizard and her loyalties are tested.
Brockenbrough, Martha. The Game of Love and Death (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books) — In Seattle in 1937 two seventeen-year-olds, Henry, who is white, and Flora, who is African-American, become the unwitting pawns in a game played by two immortal figures, Love and Death, where they must choose each other at the end, or one of them will die.
Childs, Tera Lynn, and Tracy Deebs. Powerless (Sourcebooks Fire) — Kenna feels inferior because everyone else has some talent or power, so when villains break into the lab where she interns, she will not let criminals steal the research that will make her extraordinary, too. But secrets are spilled and one of the villains saves her life, leading her to think about good and evil, heroes and villains, and what it means to be powerful and powerless.
Cornwell, Betsy. Mechanica (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt /Clarion Books) — A retelling of Cinderella about an indomitable inventor-mechanic who finds her prince but realizes she doesn’t want a fairy tale happy ending after all
Dinnison, Kris. You and Me and Him (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Clarion Books) — Maggie Bowers thinks she knows what to expect her junior year of high school, but when she and her out-of-the-closet best friend Nash have feelings for the same boy she wonders if winning someone’s heart means losing her soul mate.
Doktorski, Jennifer Salvato. The Summer After You + Me (Sourcebooks Fire) — A year after Superstorm Sandy, Lucy’s life is returning to normal at the Jersey Shore, where she has grown up surfing with her twin brother, crabbing and long-boarding with friends, and working at Surf Taco, but the torch she holds for summer resident Connor, the center of The Big Mistake, still burns.
Doller, Trish. The Devil You Know (Bloomsbury) — Exhausted and rebellious after three years of working for her father and mothering her brother, eighteen-year-old Arcadia “Cadie” Wells joins two cousins who are camping their way through Florida, soon learning that one is a murderer.
Heltzel, Anne. Charlie, Presumed Dead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) — Told in separate voices, Lena and Aubrey, each hiding their own secrets, set off in search of the truth about Charlie, including if he is really dead, after meeting at his funeral and learning that he was dating both of them.
Kaufman Amie, and Jay Kristoff. Illuminae (Random House/Alfred A. Knopf) — The planet Kerenza is attacked, and Kady and Ezra find themselves on a space fleet fleeing the enemy, while their ship’s artificial intelligence system and a deadly plague may be the end of them all.
Laurie, Victoria. When (Disney/Hyperion) — Sixteen-year-old Maddie Flynn cannot help but see the death date of everyone she meets or sees in a photograph or on-screen, and her alcoholic mother exploits this by having her do readings for money, but when Maddie predicts the death of a young boy, she becomes the center of an FBI investigation.
Matharu, Taran. The Novice: Summoner: Book One (Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends) — When Fletcher, a blacksmith’s apprentice, learns he can summon demons, he travels with his demon to an academy for adepts where he is to train as a Battlemage in the Empire’s war against the orcs, but he discovers that all is not as it seems.
Nielsen, Jennifer A. Mark of the Thief (Scholastic/Scholastic Press) — When Nic, a slave in the mines outside of Rome, is forced to enter a sealed cavern containing lost treasures of Julius Caesar, he finds himself in possession of an ancient amulet filled with magic once reserved for the Gods, and becomes the center of a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor and destroy Rome.
Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places (Random House/Alfred A. Knopf) — Told in alternating voices, when Theodore Finch and Violet Markey meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school–both teetering on the edge–it’s the beginning of an unlikely relationship, a journey to discover the “natural wonders” of the state of Indiana, and two teens’ desperate desire to heal and save one another.
Priest, Cherie. Illustrated by Kali Ciesemier. I Am Princess X (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine) — Years after writing stories about a superheroine character she created with a best friend who died in a tragic car accident, sixteen-year-old May is shocked to see stickers, patches, and graffiti images of the superheroine appearing around Seattle.
Schmidt, Tiffany. Hold Me Like a Breath (Bloomsbury) — Penny Landlow, seventeen, the overprotected daughter of a powerful crime family, has rarely left the family estate due to a blood disorder but when tragedy strikes and she is left alone in New York City, she must prove she is not as fragile as everyone believes.
Schreiber, Joe. Con Academy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) — Con man Will Shea may have met his match in scammer Andrea Dufresne as they make a high-stakes deal that will determine who gets to stay at Connaughton Academy, one of the most elite and privileged preparatory schools in the country, and who must leave.
Sedgwick, Marcus. The Ghosts of Heaven (Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press) — Four linked stories of discovery and survival begin with a Paleolithic-era girl who makes the first written signs, continue with Anna, who people call a witch, then a mad twentieth-century poet who watches the ocean knowing the horrors it hides, and concluding with an astronaut on the first spaceship from Earth sent to colonize another world.
Simmons, Kristen. The Glass Arrow (Tor Teen) — Living in hiding with other ragtag girls in a world where women are hunted and sold for breeding, Aya is caught by a group of businessmen who test her survival skills.
Stohl, Margaret. Black Widow Forever Red (Disney/Marvel Press) — Natasha Romanov, called the Black Widow, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, rescues a young girl from Ivan, the man who once trained her as an assassin–and eight years later she is called upon to protect the teenage Ava from a threat from the past–and possibly from S.H.I.E.L.D itself.
Stone, Tamara Ireland. Every Last Word (Disney/Hyperion) — Consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can’t turn off, a girl coping with Purely-Obsessional OCD learns to accept herself and take control of her life through her experiences in poetry club.
Westerfeld, Scott, Margo Lanagan, and Deborah Biancotti. Zeroes (Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse) — Told from separate viewpoints, teens Scam, Crash, Flicker, Anonymous, Bellwether, and Kelsie, all born in the year 2000 and living in Cambria, California, have superhuman abilities that give them interesting but not heroic lives until they must work as a community to respond to a high stakes crisis.
Weingarten, Lynn. Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls (Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse) — They say Delia burned burned herself to death in her stepfather’s shed, but June does not believe it was suicide because she and Delia used to be closer than anything, but one night a year ago, everything changed when they and June’s boyfriend Ryan let their good time get out of hand, and now, a year later, June owes it to Delia to know if her best friend committed suicide or was murdered.
Yoon, Nicola. Everything, Everything (Random House/Delacorte Press) — The story of a teenage girl who’s literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she’s ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.