Abraham Lincoln Award List 2010-2011

Previous years: Abraham Lincoln HS Book Award list 2009-2010
                              2009-10 Abe List with Youtube Book Introductions
                              Abraham Lincoln HS Book Award list 2008-2009
                                Abraham Lincoln HS Book Award list 2007-2008
                              Abraham Lincoln HS Book Award list 2006-2007

The Absolutely True  Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 

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.         www.fallsapart.com

Boot Camp by Todd Strasser  

In this novel ripped from the headlines, 15-year-old Garrett is kidnapped and sent to a disciplinary boot camp, where he is subjected to physical and psychological abuse.                                                        www.toddstrasser.com

Deadline by Chris Crutcher

Given the medical diagnosis of one year to live, high school senior Ben Wolf decides to fulfill his greatest fantasies, ponders his life's purpose and legacy, and converses through dreams with a spiritual guide known as "Hey-Soos."                                                                                                            www.chriscrutcher.com

Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Sophomore Frankie starts dating senior Matthew Livingston, but when he refuses to talk about the all-male secret society that he and his friends belong to, Frankie infiltrates the society in order to enliven their mediocre pranks.                                  www.e-lockhart.com

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin  

After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to "live".                         www.memoirsofa.com                                                                  

Evermore: A Novel by Alyson Noël  

Since the car accident that claimed the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever can see auras and hear people's thoughts, and she goes out of her way to hide from other people until she meets Damen, another psychic teenager who is hiding even more mysteries.                                            www.alysonnoel.com

Sequels to Evermore:

Graceling by Kristin Cashore  

In a world where some people are born with extreme and often-feared skills called Graces, Katsa struggles for redemption from her own horrifying Grace, the Grace of killing, and teams up with another young fighter to save their land from a corrupt king.                               http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/

Companion book to Graceling:

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben  

Worrying about their sixteen-year-old son Adam in the wake of a friend's suicide and a string of other traumatic school incidents, Tia and Mike Baye install an activity monitor on their son's computer and are alarmed to learn that the suicide victim's mother   believes Adam may have been involved.        www.harlancoben.com

House Rules: A Memoir by Rachel Sontag  

Traces the author's journey of recovery and self-discovery after a childhood marked by her mentally ill father, a respected suburban doctor who hid from the outside world an obsessive need for control that caused him to torture his wife and children about the most minute details of their lives.nbsp;              www.rachelsontag.com

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins  

In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.       www.suzannecollinsbooks.com

sequels: Catching Fire and Mockingjay

Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen  

Plagued by Tourette's syndrome and a stepfather who despises him, Sam meets an old man in his small Minnesota town who sends him on   a road trip designed to help him discover the truth about his life.                                                                                                                  www.jonathanfriesen.com

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen  

Suddenly unpopular sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.                www.sarahdessen.com

Paper Towns by John Green  

One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears.    www.sparksflyup.com

Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles  

When wealthy, seemingly perfect Brittany and Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, develop a relationship after Alex discovers that Brittany is not exactly who she seems to be, they must face the disapproval of their schoolmates – and others.           www/simoneelkeles.net                                   

Right Behind You by Gail Giles  

After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in   Indiana with his father and  stepmother under a different name, but has trouble fitting in and finds there are still problems to deal with from his childhood.                                                                                                                                 www.galegiles.com

Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi  

While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell J.R.'s father and the police what really happened.                                            www.paulvolponibooks.com

Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner  

Shakespeare Shapiro navigates a senior year fraught with feelings of insecurity while writing the memoir of his embarrassing life, worrying about his younger brother being cooler than he is, and having no prospects of ever getting a girlfriend. (graphic language and ideas)          www.jakewizner.com

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini   trong>

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson  

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.                                                                                                                            www.writerlady.com

Unwind by Neal Shusterman  

In a future world where those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can have their lives "unwound" and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to uphold their beliefs--and, perhaps, save their own lives.                                                                               www.storyman.com

Wake by Lisa McMann  

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.                    http://lisamcmann.com

Sequels to Wake:

READ FOR A LIFETIME 2010-2011 Booklist

from Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White

After        Amy Efaw      350 pages

Fifteen-year-old straight-A student and star athlete Devon Davenport lies on the sofa mindlessly watching morning TV. She is in physical pain, and her only recourse is to mentally disconnect. In complete denial that she is pregnant, Devon leaves her baby in the trash to die, and after the baby is discovered, Devon is accused of attempted murder.

Aftershock      Kelly Easton      176 pages

In shock and unable to speak after being in a car accident in Oregon which has killed his parents, seventeen-year-old Adam journeys across the country on foot and by hitchhiking,to his home in Rhode Island helped by an array of unexpected characters.

Along for the Ride      Sarah Dessen      383 pages

18-year old Auden is smart and good at school, but missed out on having friends and being social. After a strangely inspirational message from her older brother Hollis, she impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating the mysterious Eli.       Dessen talks about Along for the Ride

The Blind Side      Michael Lewis      352 pages

When we first meet Michael Oher in this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football. What changes? A rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets, loves and adopts him, and he discovers school & football, and this puts him on the road to one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. As professional football evolves into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost, Michael turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.

Book of a Thousand Days      Shannon Bloomsbury Hale      336 pages

Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower for Saren’s refusal to marry a man she despises, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids. The arrival outside the tower of Saren’s two suitors—one welcome, and the other decidedly less so—brings both hope and great danger, and Dashti must make the desperate choices of a girl whose life is worth more than she knows.

Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The      John Boyne      224 pages

Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer who demands good manners and unquestioning respect from his son, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence. Uncertain of what his father actually does for a living, the boy is eager to discover the secret of the people on the other side, knowing instinctively that his father must never learn about this friendship.

Catcher in the Rye      J.D. Salinger      224 pages

Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old prep school student, is expelled from school two weeks before Christmas. Rather than face his family, he goes alone to New York City.

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith     Deborah Heiligman      272 pages

When the book opens, Charles Darwin is trying to make a decision: drawing a line down a piece of paper and putting the pros of marriage on one side and the cons on the other. Darwin is interested in wedded life, yet he is afraid that family life will take him away from the revolutionary work he is doing on the evolution of species. Charles Darwin and his wife Emma were deeply in love , but their opinions often clashed. Emma was extremely religious, and Charles questioned God's very existence. An excellent portrait of what life was like during the Victorian era, a time when illness and death were ever present, and, in a way, a real-time example of the survival of the fittest.

Chasing Lincoln’s Killer      James L. Swanson      208 pages

Based on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the man hunters, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer is a fast-paced account of Lincoln's assassination and the 12-day search for his killer.While Lincoln lay dying, Booth's accomplices clumsily attempt to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Booth talks his way past a guard meant to bar him from crossing a bridge into Maryland. In focusing on Booth, the author reveals the depth of divisions in the nation just after the war, the disorder within the government and the challenges ahead.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice     Phillip Hoose      144 pages

Nine months before Rosa Parks sparked the famous bus boycott in Montgomery, AL.,in March 1955, 15-year-old Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested, and although she received some help from local civil rights leaders, they decided that the sometimes-volatile teen was not suitable to be the public face of a mass protest. Colvin was left with a police record and then coped with an unwed pregnancy and expulsion from school. In spite of those troubles, she agreed to be plaintiff in the court case that eventually integrated Montgomery's buses. The first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

Going Bovine      Libba Bray      496 pages

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital, in an attempt to find a cure.

Graceling      Kristin Cashore      480 pages

Katsa is a warrior-girl and a Graceling—a being with special talents. Katsa's Grace, ability to fight (and kill, if she wanted to), is unequaled in the seven kingdoms. Forced to act as a henchman for a manipulative king, Katsa forms a secret council of like-minded citizens who carry out secret missions to promote justice over cruelty and abuses of power.                        

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society       Mary Ann Shaffer      288 pages

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. A letter draws her into the wonderfully eccentric world on the island of Guernsey, between England and France which was invaded by Germany , and the quirky members of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—a book club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were caught breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.              

Half Broke Horses      Jeannette Walls      288 pages

For the first 10 years of her life, Lily Casey Smith, the narrator of this true-life novel by her granddaughter, Walls, lived in a dirt dugout in west Texas. Having been educated in fits and starts because of her parents' poverty, Lily becomes a teacher at age 15 in a remote frontier town she reaches after a solo 28-day ride. Marriage to a bigamist almost saps her spirit, but later she weds a rancher with whom she shares two children and a strain of plucky resilience. (They sell bootleg liquor during Prohibition, hiding the bottles under a baby's crib.)Assailed by flash floods, tornados and droughts, Lily never gets far from hardscrabble drudgery, but she is a spirited heroine, fiercely outspoken against hypocrisy and prejudice, a rodeo rider and fearless breaker of horses, and a ruthless poker player.              

The Help      Kathryn Stockett      464 pages

The Help is set during the blossoming civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs her. The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club set relies but mistrusts, enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.         

If I Stay      Gayle Forman      208 pages

When snow cancels school, Mia and her family pile into their beat-up station wagon for a drive. Unlike most 17-year-olds, Mia is secretly enjoying hanging out with her quirky family until an oncoming driver shatters their lives, leaving the gravely injured Mia with the ultimate decision: Should she stay or go? She is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents' corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. While in a coma, Mia reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. As a spirit-like observer, she narrates the next 24 hours, describing how her medical team, friends, boyfriend and extended family care for her each in their own way.            

The Lightning Thief   (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)     Rick Riordan      400 pages

At the outset of this fast-paced tale it would seem that Percy Jackson is just another New York kid diagnosed with ADHD, who has good intentions, a nasty stepfather, and a long line of schools that have rejected him. Percy learns he is a demigod, the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea. His mother sends him to a summer camp for demigods where with his new friends, a disguised satyr, and the half-blood daughter of Athena, Percy sets out across the country to rectify a feud between Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. Along the way they must cope with the Furies, Medusa, motorcycle thug Aires, and various other immortals.

Marcelo in the Real World      Francisco X Stork      320 pages

17-year-old Marcelo Sandoval harbors an obsession with religion; hears internal music; and sleeps in a tree house, all part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify…and he's always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm's mailroom in order to experience "the real world." There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm. He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it's a picture he finds in a file -- a picture of a girl with half a face -- that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight. 

Monstrumologist      Rick Yancey      448 pages

Pride and Prejudice      Jane Austen      352 pages

Elizabeth Bennet is a country gentleman's daughter in 19th Century England,the most level-headed of five daughters, whose mother's greatest concern is getting her daughters married off to well-established gentlemen. Jane, Elizabeth's older sister, is nearly as sensible and practical as Elizabeth, but Jane is also the beauty of the family, and her mother's highest hope for a good match. Mr. Bingley and Jane like each other immediately, but the spirited Elizabeth and wealthy Mr. Darcy dislike each other at first sight, and each must contend with their pride and prejudices while Elizabeth's mother plots marriages for all her daughters.

The Road       Cormac McCarthy      256 pages

America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes,with birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. They carry blankets and scavenged food in a shopping cart and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets. Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands of cannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," but from the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turned into an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce love for his son.

Shiver      Maggie Stiefvater      400 pages

In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf — her wolf, who, Grace is sure, saved her from an attack by other wolves when she was nine. Over the ensuing years he has returned each season, watching her with those haunting eyes as if longing for something to happen. When a teen is killed by wolves, a hunting party decides to retaliate. Grace races through the woods and discovers a wounded boy shivering on her back porch. One look at his yellow eyes and she knows that this is her wolf in human form. Fate has finally brought Sam and Grace together, and as their love grows and intensifies, so does the reality of what awaits them. It is only a matter of time before the winter cold changes him back into a wolf, and this time he might stay that way forever.

SuperFreakonomics      Steven Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner      288 pages

SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen drastically. Examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is – good, bad, ugly, and -- super freaky.    

Wintergirls      Laurie Halse Anderson      288 pages

Lia and Cassie had been best friends since elementary school, and each developed her own style of eating disorder that leads to disaster. Now 18, they are no longer friends. Despite their estrangement, Cassie calls Lia 33 times on the night of her death, and Lia never answers. As events play out, Lia's guilt, her need to be thin, and her fight for acceptance unravel in an almost poetic stream of consciousness in this startlingly crisp and pitch-perfect first-person narrative.

Teen reading challenge

Sign up in the Media Center by Oct 25, 2010 .
Read four or more of the books on either suggested reading list to:
• Enjoy new books
• Four books on Read for a Lifetime earn a signed certificate from Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White
• Vote for your favorite Abraham Lincoln Award book with high school students statewide, if you read at least four books on the Abraham Lincoln Award list by Feb 28.
• Writing college applications? Read four or more books and include the reading program in your activities.

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