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 38  There are a total of 92 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for Bittersweet in the hollow.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;13-up
Description:
When a girl goes missing in her secluded Appalachian town, seventeen-year-old Linden, who can taste other people's emotions, recovers haunting memories of her own disappearance and explores the legend of the Moth-Wigned Man, leading her to wonder if there are some secrets best left buried.
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.
Author:
Notes:
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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Notes:
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 Eagle drums.
Notes:
Fiction for Children;10-13
Description:
In preparation for winter, a skilled young hunter embarks on a perilous journey up the mountain to gather obsidian, where he encounters the fearsome eagle god Savik and is presented with a life-altering choice.
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 Greymist Fair.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;12-up
Description:
"The villagers of Greymist Fair know that the woods are a dangerous and magical place, and that they should never set foot off the road. But when a young tailor discovers a body, her search for the culprit reveals even more strange and dark happenings around her town"--
Book cover for Hamra and the jungle of memories.
Author:
Notes:
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 I'd rather burn than bloom.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
Alternating between present day and flashbacks, multiracial Filipina-American teen Marisol tries to figure out who she really is in the wake of her mother's sudden death.
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.
Series:
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 Land of broken promises.
Author:
Notes:
Fiction for Children;9-12
Description:
After a rocky first year, Anna's family have settled into life in California--their small restaurant is even turning a profit. Then her parents make a shattering discovery: their visas have expired. Anna's world is quickly overwhelmed by unfamiliar words like "undocumented" and "inequality." She longs to share the towering secret that looms over every aspect of her life with a friend, but her parents strictly forbid her from telling anyone. As Anna...
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.
Book cover for The lost year.
Notes:
Fiction for Children;9-13
Description:
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation. But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmothers belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines...
Book cover for The museum of lost and found.
Author:
Notes:
Fiction for Children;9-13
Description:
When eleven-year-old Vanessa discovers an abandoned museum, she starts filling it with her own projects and art and memories, thinking maybe, if she can put them all together in just the right way, she can finally understand why she and her relationships are the way they are.
Book cover for My flawless life.
Author:
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;13-up
Description:
At the most elite private school in Washington, DC., whenever anyone has a problem that they need to go away, they hire Hana Yang Lerner. Hana is a fixer. She knows who to call, what to say, and how to make sure secrets stay where they belong, buried. She can fix anything. Except her own life, which was destroyed when her father, senator Skip Lerner, was arrested for an accident that left one woman nearly dead. Now Hana's reputation is ruined and...
Book cover for Once there was.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;12-up
Description:
Once was, once wasń€™t. So began the stories Marjań€™s father told her as a little gir倔fables like the story of the girl who sprung a unicorn from a hunteŕ€™s snare, or the nomad boy who rescued a baby shirdal. Tales of extraordinary beasts that filled her with curiosity and wonder. But Marjań€™s not a little girl anymore. In the wake of her fatheŕ€™s sudden...
Book cover for Only this beautiful moment.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this sweeping intergenerational story, examining queer identity at the end of different decades, follows three boys in the same Iranian family as they each gain a new understanding of their history, culture--and themselves.