CCBC Choices 2024 -- Teens (ages 12 and up)

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compiles a yearly list of excellent books for youth readers.

Showing 1 - 20 of 39  There are a total of 92 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for The 21.
Notes:
Contemporary People, Places, and Issues;13-up
Description:
"In the ongoing landmark case Juliana vs. United States, twenty-one young plaintiffs claim that the government’s support of the fossil-fuel industry is actively contributing to climate change and that all citizens have a constitutional right to a stable climate—especially children and young adults, because they cannot vote and will inherit the problems of the future. Elizabeth Rusch’s The Twenty-One is a gripping legal and environmental thriller...
Book cover for 83 days in Mariupol.
Notes:
Contemporary People, Places, and Issues;12-up
Description:
"A city ruined. In once quiet residential streets, two armies battle, driving people into cellars and basements with little food or water. No lights or heat. Dwindling medical supplies. Shells and bullets deliver cruel, random death to the young and old, men, women, and children. This is Mariupol, a Ukrainian city and early target of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bordering Russian-occupied territory, the coastal city seemed doomed to a defeat...
Book cover for Always the almost.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
Sixteen-year-old trans boy Miles Jacobson has two New Year's resolutions: 1) win back his ex-boyfriend (and star of the football team) Shane McIntyre, and 2) finally beat his slimy arch-nemesis at the Midwest's biggest classical piano competition. But that's not going to be so easy. For one thing, Shane broke up with Miles two weeks after Miles came out as trans, and now Shane's stubbornly ignoring him, even when they literally bump into each other....
Book cover for The blood years.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
Frederieke Teitler and her older sister, Astra, live in a house, in a city, in a world divided. Their father ran out on them when Rieke was only six, leaving their mother a wreck and their grandfather as their only stable family. He’s done his best to provide for them and shield them from antisemitism, but now, seven years later, being a Jew has become increasingly dangerous, even in their beloved home of Czernowitz, long considered a safe haven...
Book cover for Chinese menu.
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Contemporary People, Places, and Issues;8-up
Description:
"From fried dumplings to fortune cookies, here are the tales behind your favorite foods . . . Separated into courses like a Chinese menu, these tales -- based in real history and folklore -- are filled with squabbling dragons, magical fruits, and hungry monks. This book will bring you to far-off times and marvelous places, all while making your mouth water. And, along the way, you might just discover a deeper understanding of the resilience and triumph...
Book cover for Dear Mothman.
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Fiction for Children;9-12
Description:
After the death of his best friend and the only other trans boy at school, Noah starts writing letters expressing his feelings to the humanoid creature Mothman and risks everything when he treks into the woods to prove Mothman's existence.
Book cover for The dubious pranks of Shaindy Goodman.
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Fiction for Children;9-12
Description:
Helping her popular next-door neighbor Gayil set up what she thinks are harmless pranks, 12-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl Shaindy must figure out how to stop them before she becomes the next target when the pranks escalate and turn malicious.
Book cover for Enter the body.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
In the room beneath a theater stage, the ghosts of Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and other teenage girls who died tragically in Shakespeare's plays, share their experiences and trauma and get the chance to retell the stories of their lives in their own terms.
Book cover for The fire of stars.
Notes:
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir;8-12
Description:
Astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne was the first person to discover what burns at the heart of stars. But she didn't start out as the groundbreaking scientist she would eventually become. She started out as a girl full of curiosity, hoping one day to unlock the mysteries of the universe. With lyrical, evocative text by Kirsten W. Larson and extraordinary illustrations by award-winning illustrator Katherine Roy, this moving biography powerfully...
Book cover for Forever is now.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;12-up
Description:
"When sixteen-year-old Sadie, a Black bisexual recluse, develops agoraphobia the summer before her junior year, she relies on her best friend, family, and therapist to overcome her fears."--
Book cover for Funeral songs for dying girls.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
Winifred has lived in the apartment above the cemetery office with her father, who works in the crematorium all her life, close to her mother's grave. With her sixteenth birthday only days away, Winifred has settled into a lazy summer schedule, lugging her obese Chihuahua around the grounds in a squeaky red wagon to visit the neglected gravesides and nursing a serious crush on her best friend, Jack. Her habit of wandering the graveyard at all hours...
Book cover for Ginny off the map.
Notes:
Fiction for Children;8-12
Description:
On the last day of fifth grade, super-smart eleven-year-old Ginny learns that her father, who is a military ER doctor, is being deployed to Afghanistan--devastating news because they are already moving to another post in Maryland and Ginny depends on her father to help her manage her obsessions, panic attacks, and general meltdowns. One of her obsessions is geographical facts, and somehow Ginny hopes to use her geographical knowledge to overcome her...
Book cover for Hamra and the jungle of memories.
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Fiction for Children;9-12
Description:
Courage is the strongest magic there is. On Hamra's thirteenth birthday, she receives nothing but endless nagging and yet another errand to run in the Langkawi jungle that looms behind her home. No one has remembered her special day. And so, stifled and angry, Hamra ignores something she shouldn’t: the rules of the jungle. Always ask permission before you enter. Hamra walks boldly in. Never take what isn’t yours. Hamra finds the most perfect...
Book cover for Her radiant curse.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;13-up
Description:
Channi was not born a monster. But when her own father offers her in sacrifice to the Demon Witch, she is forever changed. Cursed with a serpent’s face, Channi is the exact opposite of her beautiful sister, Vanna—the only person in the village who looks at Channi and doesn’t see a monster. The only person she loves and trusts. Now seventeen, Vanna is to be married off in a vulgar contest that will enrich the coffers of the village leaders....
Book cover for Highly suspicious and unfairly cute.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;13-up
Description:
"Bradley Graeme is pretty much perfect. He’s a star football player, manages his OCD well (enough), and comes out on top in all his classes . . . except the ones he shares with his ex-best friend, Celine. Celine Bangura is conspiracy-theory-obsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to holiday overconsumption—yet, she’s still not cool enough for the popular kids’ table. Which is why Brad abandoned her for the...
Book cover for Holding her own.
Notes:
The Arts;8-12
Description:
"When Jackie Ormes sees an opportunity, she takes it. She's a journalist, cartoonist, fashionista, philanthropist, and activist -- and she wants to use her artistry to bring joy and hope to Black people everywhere. But in post-World War II America, Black people are still being denied their civil rights, and Jackie has a dilemma: How can her art remain true to her signature Jackie joy, while also staying honest about the inequalities Black people have...
Book cover for Impossible escape.
Notes:
Historical People, Places, and Events;13-up
Description:
"A true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust: one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape"--
Book cover for The Isles of the Gods.
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Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;12-up
Description:
Selly has salt water in her veins. So when her father leaves her high and dry in the port of Kirkpool, she has no intention of riding out the winter at home while he sails off to adventure. But any plans to follow him are dashed when a handsome stranger with tell-tale magician's marks on his arm commandeers her ship. He is Prince Leander of Alinor and he needs to cross the Crescent Sea without detection so he can complete a ritual on the sacred Isles...
Book cover for Just Jerry.
Notes:
The Arts;8-12
Description:
"Jerry Pinkney, Caldecott Medal winner and illustrator of over one hundred books, tells the story of his childhood and how he developed his artistic talent." --
Book cover for The lost library.
Notes:
Fiction for Children;8-12
Description:
When a mysterious Little Free Library guarded by a large orange cat appears overnight, eleven-year-old Evan plucks two weathered books from its shelves, never suspecting that his life is about to change.