Teens' Top Ten of 2008 with Read-Alikes
Every year thousands of teens across the country vote for the “Teens’ Top Ten” – the best books of the year for teens. You’ll find all ten in the list below – and each one is followed by “read-alikes” – suggested books you might want to read next …
Eclipse
Stephenie Meyer, 2008
Bella must choose between her friendship with Jacob, a werewolf, and her relationship with Edward, a vampire. But when Seattle is ravaged by a string of killings, the three of them must decide whether their personal lives are more important than the well-being of an entire city.
Y / Meyer
Vampire Kisses
Ellen Schreiber, 2003
Sixteen-year-old Raven, an outcast who always wears black and hopes to become a vampire some day, falls in love with the mysterious new boy in town, eager to find out if he can make her dreams come true.
Y / Schreiber
Blood and Chocolate
Annette Curtis Klause, 1997
Having fallen for a human boy, a beautiful teenage werewolf must battle both her packmates and the fear of the townspeople to decide where she belongs and with whom.
Y / Klause
The House of Night series Marked, book 1
P.C. Cast, 2007
After she is Marked, 16-year-old Zoey Redbird enters the House of Night and learns that she is no average fledgling. She has been Marked as special by the vampyre Goddess Nyx. She discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school’s elite club, is misusing her gifts.
Y / Cast
Evernight
Claudia Gray, 2008
Sixteen-year-old Bianca, a new girl at the sinister Evernight boarding school, finds herself drawn to another outsider, Jared. But dark forces threaten to tear them apart and destroy Bianca’s entire world.
Y / Gray
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J. K. Rowling, 2007
Who will be left standing in the seventh and final book? Harry, Ron, and Hermione or Lord Voldermort?
Y / Rowling
Artemis Fowl series
Eoin Colfer
When a 12-year-old kid criminal mastermind decides to hold fairy for ransom, the other fairies fight back, using magic and trolls.
Y / Colfer
Eragon
Christopher Paolini, 2003
In Alagaesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.
Y / Paolini
Amulet of Samarkand
Jonathan Stroud, 2003
This first novel in the Bartimaeus trilogy stars Nathaniel, a boy wizard-in-training, who summons a 5000-year-old djinni while seeking revenge.
Y / Stroud
Vampire Academy
Richelle Mead, 2007
Two best friends, one a pure vampire and one a half-blood vampire, are captured and returned to the private school they escaped from two years ago. But things have changed since they left and there is now danger to add to the drama that resides in the halls of St. Vladimir’s Academy.
Y / Mead
Frostbite: A Vampire Academy Novel
Richelle Mead, 2008
While on a school skiing trip, guardian-in-training Rose faces everything from misunderstandings between friends to fights among factions of Moroi as reports of horrific Strigoi attacks raise tensions, ultimately leading Rose and some of those closest to her into a battle that teaches her much about life, death, and love.
Y / Mead
Beastly
Alex Flinn, 2007
A modern retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” from the point of view of the Beast, a vain Manhattan private school student who is turned into a monster must find true love before he can return to his human form.
Y / Flinn
The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Eighth Grade Bites
Heather Brewer, 2007
For thirteen years, Vlad, aided by his aunt and best friend, has kept secret that he is half-vampire. But when his missing teacher is replaced by a sinister substitute, he learns that there is more to being a vampire, and to his parents’ deaths, than he could have guessed.
Y / Brewer
Vampire High
Douglas Rees, 2003
When his family moves from California to New Sodom, Massachusetts, and Cody enters Vlad Dracul Magnet School, many things seem strange, from the dark-haired, pale-skinned, supernaturally strong students to Charon, the wolf who guides him around campus on the first day.
Y / Rees
Suck It Up
Brian Meehl, 2008
After graduating from the International Vampire League, a scrawny, teenaged vampire named Morning is given the chance to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a superhero. He embarks on a League mission to become the first vampire to reveal his identity to humans and to demonstrate how peacefully-evolved, blood-substitute-drinking vampires can use their powers to help humanity.
Y / Meehl
Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
James Patterson, 2007
Max and her flock of winged, genetically engineered teens have been literally stamped with an expiration date. Additionally, they are split apart and spread around the world, hiding or captive to their worst enemies. The whitecoats (scientists) are at it again, tinkering with the usual way of things. How will the flock manage to defeat a “re-evolution” plan to engineer a superior human race and save the world?
Y / Patterson
Dragonback series Dragon and Thief, book 1
Timothy Zahn, 2003
SF / Zahn
Spacer and Rat
Margaret Bechard, 2005
Jack’s predictable existence on Freedom space station is transformed when Kit, the Earthie rat, enters his life and enlists him and a sensitive robot in an effort to outwit the Company.
Y / Bechard
Book of Ember series The City of Ember, book 1
Jeanne Duprau, 2004
In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in her decaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.
J / Duprau
Devil’s Breath
David Gilman, 2008
When fifteen-year-old Max Gordon’s environmentalist-adventurer father goes missing while working in Namibia and Max becomes the target of a would-be assassin at his school in England, he decides he must follow his father to Africa and find him before they both are killed.
Y / Gilman
City of Bones
Cassandra Clare, 2007
Suddenly able to see demons and the Darkhunters who are dedicated to returning them to their own dimension, fifteen-year-old Clary Fray is drawn into this bizzare world when her mother disappears and Clary herself is almost killed by a monster.
Y / Clare
Wicked Lovely
Melissa Marr, 2007
Seventeen-year-old Aislinn, who has the rare ability to see faeries, is drawn against her will into a centuries-old battle between the Summer King and the Winter Queen, and the survival of her life, her love, and summer all hang in the balance.
Y / Marr
Peeps
Scott Westerfeld, 2005
Cal Thompson is a carrier of a parasite that causes vampirism and must hunt down all of the girlfriends he has unknowingly infected.
Y / Westerfeld
Wake
Lisa McMann, 2008
Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people’s dreams. But it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power.
Y / McMann
The Sweet Far Thing
Libba Bray, 2007
At Spence Academy, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle continues preparing for her London debut while struggling to determine how best to use magic to resolve a power struggle in the enchanted world of the realms, and to protect her own world and loved ones.
Y / Bray
Tithe
Holly Black, 2002
After returning home from a tour with her mother’s rock band, sixteen-year-old Kaye, who has been visited by faeries since childhood, discovers that she herself is a magical faerie creature with a special destiny.
Y / Black
The Summoning
Kelley Armstrong, 2008
After fifteen-year-old Chloe starts seeing ghosts and is sent to Lyle House, a mysterious group home for mentally disturbed teenagers, she soon discovers that neither Lyle House nor its inhabitants are exactly what they seem, and that she and her new friends are in danger.
Y / Armstrong
Extras
Scott Westerfeld, 2007
Now that the world is in a complete cultural renaissance, fifteen-year-old Aya Fuse, an Extra, just wants to lay low, so when she discovers the secret lives of the Sly Girls, she wants to report their story, but Aya knows that would propel her into celebrity--a status she’s not prepared for.
Y / Westerfeld
Other books by Scott Westerfeld:
- So Yesterday
- Uglies
- Pretties
- Specials
- The Last Days
- Midnighters series
- Peeps
Blue Bloods
Melissa De La Cruz, 2006
Select teenagers from some of New York City’s wealthiest and most socially prominent families learn a startling secret about their bloodlines.
Y / De La Cruz
Before I Die
Jenny Downham, 2007
Tessa, who has terminal cancer, creates a list of ten things she wants to do in the months she has left to live. This fierce and devastating novel explores end-of-life realities with honesty and grace.
Y / Downham
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Gabrielle Zevin, 2007
After a nasty fall, Naomi realizes that she has no memory of the last four years and finds herself reassessing every aspect of her life.
Y / Zevin
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher, 2007
When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah’s voice recounting the events leading up to her death.
Y / Asher
Cures for Heartbreak
Margo Rabb, 2007
As she navigates adolescence, ninth-grader Mia must deal with her mother’s recent death and her father’s illness while she searches for friendship and love in the world around her.
Y / Rabb
The Rules of Survival
Nancy Werlin, 2006
Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
Y / Werlin
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Jeff Kinney, 2007
Greg Heffley knows he’s not popular, but he tries hard to fit in. He records his observations about life in middle school in his journal (NOT a diary, he says) along with frequent drawings. Realistic & laugh out loud funny!
Y/ Kinney
Spud
John Van de Ruit, 2007
In 1990, thirteen-year-old John “Spud” Milton, a prepubescent choirboy, keeps a diary of his first year at an elite, boys-only boarding school in South Africa, as he deals with bizarre housemates, wild crushes, embarrassingly dysfunctional parents, and much more.
Y / Van de Ruit
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie, 2007
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Y / Alexie
How Angel Peterson Got his Name
Gary Paulsen, 2003
Author Gary Paulsen relates tales from his youth in a small town in northwestern Minnesota in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as skiing behind a souped-up car and imitating daredevil Evel Knievel.
j810 / BIO, Paulsen
Twisted
Laurie Halse Anderson, 2007
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl. But when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.
Y / Anderson
Inexcusable
Chris Lynch, 2005
High school senior and football player Keir sets out to enjoy himself on graduation night. But when he attempts to comfort a friend whose date has left her stranded, things go terribly wrong.
Y / Lynch
Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
David Lubar, 2005
While navigating his first year of high school and awaiting the birth of his new baby brother, Scott loses old friends and gains some unlikely new ones as he hones his skills as a writer.
Y / Lubar
Story of a Girl
Sara Zarr, 2007
In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna’s life at home and school has been a nightmare. But while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.
Y / Zarr
