Best Books for Young Adults

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About the Best Books for Young Adults

Administered by:

Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) logo

Nonfiction

2002 Selection(s)

Bound for the North Star: True Stories of Fugitive Slaves

by Dennis Brindell Fradin. Clarion, 2000. $20.

The stories of fifteen fugitive slaves who escaped to the North via the Underground Railroad and other routes.


Counting Coup: the True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn

by Larry Colton. Warner Books, 2000. $24.95.

Sportswriter Larry Colton chronicles a season of HardinHigh School (Montana) girls' basketball as the players struggle with injuries, prejudice and the dismal reality of life on the Crow Indian Reservation.


Failure Is Impossible: the History of American Women's Rights

by Martha Kendall. Lerner, 2001. $22.60.

A brief but lively account of the struggles for equality and opportunity faced and won by American women throughout our country's history.


Fighting for Honor: Japanese Americans and World War II

by Michael Cooper. Houghton Mifflin, 2000. $16.

The Japanese-American experience at home and on the front lines is revealed in this thoughtful book about World War II.


Finding Fish

by Antwone Fisher with Mim Eichler Rivas. HarperCollins, 2001. $25.

Once an abused foster child and a homeless teen, Antwone relates his struggle to attain successful manhood and find his lost family.


Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by 20th Century American Art

Edited by Jan Greenberg. Harry Abrams, 2001. $19.95.

A compilation of poems written in response to various pieces of American art.


Into the New Country: Eight Remarkable Women of the West

by Liza Ketchum. Little Brown, 2000. $18.95.

Profiles eight women who made fascinating contributions to the history of the American West. Includes photos, illustrations, and primary-source material.


Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist

by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Delacorte, 2001. $14.95.

An intriguing, colorful, biography of the Dutch artist's troubled life.


We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History

by Phillip Hoose. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. $26.

Stories of over 70 people of diverse cultures who were present of played a role at important events in U. S. history.


Fiction

2002 Selection(s)

Fighting Ruben Wolfe

by Markus Zusak. Scholastic, 2001. $15.95.

Two brothers from the wrong side of the tracks spar with life in defense of family and on the Australian underground boxing circuit.


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