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 46  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 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 Buffalo flats.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
Seventeen-year-old Rebecca Leavitt has traveled by covered wagon from Utah to the Northwest Territories of Canada, where her father and brothers are now homesteading and establishing a new community with other Latter-Day Saints. Rebecca is old enough to get married, but what kind of man would she marry and who would have a girl like her—a girl filled with ideas and opinions? Someone gallant and exciting like Levi Howard? Or a man of ideas like her...
Book cover for Cross my heart and never lie.
Notes:
Fiction for Children;9-13
Description:
★ WINNER of the 2024 Stonewall Book Award, American Library Association
Perfect for fans of The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag, HeartStopper by Alice Oseman, and Jen Wang's The Dressmaker and the Prince.

In this fresh, sensitive, diary-style graphic novel, 12-year-old Tuva's questions about becoming a teenager are confusing—so when her first crush turns out to be on another
...
Book cover for Down came the rain.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;13-up
Description:
"Despite her father's disapproval, sixteen-year-old Eliza, displaced by Hurricane Harvey, throws herself into environmental activism at her new high school, where she meets Javi, who shares her experience of climate-related trauma and helps her cope with the emotional impact of ecological disasters." --Library of Congress.
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 Everyone wants to know.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;13-up
Description:
The Lo family sticks together. That’s what Honor has been told her whole life while growing up in the glare of the public eye on Lo and Behold, the reality show about her, her four siblings, and their parents. Their show may be off the air, but the Lo family members still live in the spotlight as influencers churning out podcasts, bestselling books, and brand partnerships. So when Honor’s father announces that he’s moving out of their northern...
Book cover for Fire From the Sky.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;12-up
Description:
MICHAEL L. PRINTZ HONOR WINNER
KIRKUS BEST OF THE YEAR


From 23-year-old Sámi debut novelist and reindeer owner Moa Backe Åstot, Fire From the Sky is a queer coming-of-age story about heritage, family ties and age-old commitments to the past.

Ánte's life has been steeped in Sámi tradition. It is indisputable to him that he, an only child, will keep working...
Book cover for Fire from the sky.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;12-up
Description:
Ánte's life has been steeped in Sami tradition. It is indisputable to him that he, an only child, will keep working with the reindeer. But there is something else too, something tugging at him. His feelings for his best friend Erik have changed, grown into something bigger. What would people say if they knew? And how does Erik feel? And Erik's voice just the push of a button away. Ánte couldn't answer, could he? But how could he ignore it? Fire...
Book cover for A first time for everything.
Author:
Notes:
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir;10-14
Description:
In this feel-good coming-of-age memoir, the best-selling author and Caldecott Medalist shares his life-changing middle school trip to Europe during which he experiences a series of firsts, including first love.
Book cover for First-year orientation.
Notes:
Fiction for Young Adults;14-up
Description:
"Spanning genres and moods, from humorous to heartfelt to ghostly, this collection of sixteen linked short stories about the first days of college tackles what it feels like to take those first shaky steps into adulthood"--
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 The girl I am, was, and never will be.
Notes:
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir;14-up
Description:
Author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven from her true story of growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents and the fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth by the white woman who gave her up for adoption. At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds...
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....