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YA Talk

The Alex Awards, 2003

The Alex Awards, funded by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust and cosponsored by Booklist, honor the top 10 adult books for teenagers published during the previous calendar year. Selected by a nine-member YALSA committee, the winning books, described below, represent the best for teens, based on literary quality, readability, and appeal for readers ages 12–18. They are excellent springboards for introducing teens to the riches of adult literature; at the same time, they reinforce librarians’ commitment to young adult readers as recognized by the work of Margaret Edwards, Booklist, YALSA, and the American Library Association as a whole. Both paper and hardcover versions are listed below; several of the titles are also available in audiobook format. —Stephanie Zvirin

Barry, Lynda. One Hundred Demons. Sasquatch, $24.95 (0-57061-337-0).
Whether she’s talking about head lice, old boyfriends, or hippies who “forgot” to pay her wages, Barry playfully explores, in “autobifictionalographical” text and art, those demons common to teens—and to us all.

Conroy, Pat. My Losing Season. Doubleday/Nan A Talese, $27.95 (0-385-48912-9).
In this powerful memoir, best-selling novelist Conroy ruminates on the profound effect of his final year as a point guard for the Citadel’s basketball team, interweaving stories about the years leading up to college, his abusive father, his love-hate relationship with his school, and his growing fondness for books and writing.

Ferris, Timothy. Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril. Simon & Schuster, $26 (0-684-86579-3).
Differentiating between the nature of stargazing done by professionals in well-equipped observatories and the work of backyard scientists using homemade telescopes, Ferris invites teens to join the scientific community by tracing the contributions of amateur astronomers, ranging from Copernicus to Brian May.

Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair. Viking, $23.95 (0-670-03064-3).
Meet Thursday Next, a literary detective for England’s Special Operations Network. Her mission: to stop a serial killer who enters books and kills literary characters. Mr. Quaverly has already disappeared from copies of Martin Chuzzlewit. Jane Eyre, beware! It’s mystery, science fiction, and social satire. It’s also lots of fun.

Lawson, Mary. Crow Lake. Dial, $23.95 (0-385-33611-X); Bantam, paper, $12.95 (0-385-33767-9).
Now a successful zoology professor, Kate recalls her parents’ death and being brought up and sustained by her older brothers, especially Matt, with whom she shares a love of the wonders of nature. An affecting novel about hardship, tragedy, choices, and family relationships.

Malloy, Brian. The Year of Ice. St. Martin’s, $22.95 (0-312-28948-0).
Malloy’s first novel is a memorable story of the emotional complexities of American families and the complications of coming of age. High-school senior Kevin Doyle is literally skating on thin ice: a self-described “alpha male,” he is secretly gay and increasingly estranged from his father, who has a secret of his own.

Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor Was Divine. Knopf, $18 (0-375-41429-0).
A short, understated, but also powerful novel in which members of a Japanese American family, forced to move from a happy California home to cramped, humiliating detention camps set up by the American government, return home after World War II to find suspicious neighbors, a vandalized house, and a broken family.

Packer, Ann. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. Knopf/Borzoi, $24 (0-375-41282-4); Vintage, paper, $14 (0-375-72713-2).
A reckless attempt to impress Carrie, Mike’s dive off Clausen’s Pier rendered him paralyzed. Now Carrie finds herself torn between the loyalty she’s expected to feel toward Mike and her need to transform herself. She takes a dive of her own—into adulthood—when she escapes to New York.

Southgate, Martha. The Fall of Rome. Scribner, $23 (0-684-86500-9); paper, $12 (0-743-22721-2).
The author of the award-winning young-adult novel Another Way to Dance (1998) delves deeply into the social and emotional elements that unite and divide us. Issues of race, identity, and integrity are intensely explored through a tragic human triangle comprising the lone African American instructor at an exclusive boys’ boarding school in Connecticut; a promising African American student from New York City; and a white divorcée.

Weisberg, Joseph. 10th Grade. Random, $23.95 (0-375-50584-9); paper, $11.95 (0-8129-6662-7).
What Jeremy Reskin lacks in grammatical skill, he more than makes up for in self-reflection in this record of the events of his sophomore year, which reveals his fascination with new-girl-in-town Renee Shopmaker, his changing relationships with his family, and his attempts to sort out the nature of friendship.

The 2003 Alex Award Committee: co-chairs Deborah Taylor, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD, and David Mowery, Brooklyn (NY) Public Library; Michael Cart, Chico, CA; Betty Carter, Coppell, TX; Jack Forman, San Diego (CA) Mesa College Library; Pamela Spencer Holley, Virginia Beach, VA; Bonnie Kunzel, New Jersey State Library, Trenton; Susan Riley, Mount Kisco (NY) Public Library; Judy Sasges, Sno-Isle Regional Library, Marysville, WA; Stephanie Zvirin, consultant, Booklist.

(Booklist/April 1, 2003)