Name: Rebecca C.
Branch: Parker Hill

Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator, by Jennifer Allison. Thirteen year old Gilda Joyce enjoys spinning wild stories and using her psychic abilities to solve mysteries. Bored with her surroundings in Michigan, Gilda invites herself to spend the summer in San Francisco at a long-lost relative’s mansion. Upon arrival at the mansion, Gilda meets a cousin she never knew she had and discovers a boarded up tower. 

Shadowbox Hunt A Search and Find Odyssey,  written and illustrated by Laura L. Seeley. A search and find book with fantastically detailed illustrations. Each time you pick this book up, you will find something new. Caution: you may loose track of time once you start studying the pictures!

The End of the Beginning: Being the Adventures of a Small Snail and an even smaller Ant, by Avi.  Avon the Snail and Edward the Ant are bored with their surroundings. The two decide to go on a journey to an unknown place. Great wordplay and a fantastic read-aloud!

A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels, by Libba Bray.  Romance, fantasy, mystery, and dark secrets set in Victorian England at a prestigious all girls boarding school. 

On Pointe, by Lorie Ann Grover.  Written in free verse, six dancers tell their stories of becoming ballet dancers.

If You Come Softly, by Jacqueline Woodson. Jeremiah and Ellie meet at their elite private school in New York City and a beautiful relationship grows until tragedy strikes. 

Behind You, the moving sequel to If You Come Softly, depicts Jeremiah’s loved ones struggling to deal with a violent and senseless death. 

Emako Blue, by Brenda Woods.  Monterey, Savannah, Jamal, and Eddie are teens who are forced to unite as they struggle to deal with the death of their beloved classmate, Emako Blue. 

Listening for Lions, by Gloria Whelan

In 1918 Rachel, a thirteen year old girl, is left an orphan after her missionary parents die from the influenza epidemic which hit East Africa. Her neighbors trick her into believing they wish to help her, but Rachel soon finds herself being shipped off to England where she longs for the African countryside and is caught living a horrible lie.    Swahili words are used throughout the text. A Glossary can be found in the back of the book.

Name: Georgia Titonis
Branch: Uphams Corner Branch

The Key to the Golden Firebird by Maureen Johnson. The three Gold sisters--Brooks, the pretty one; May, the smart one and; Palmer, the baby--are all deeply affected by their fathers sudden death.  This book mixes family issues and grief and romance and coming of age in a way that is funny and touching and totally believable. 

Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci. Veronica, aka Egg, isolated herself from everyone at school and home until the new boy at school cracks her shell.  I loved this book--all of the characters were fully realized, her mother and her rival are multilayered.

Name: Sheila Scott
Branch: West Roxbury Branch

Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin.  This book describes what happens to fifteen year old Liz AFTER she is hit by a car and dies.  An unusually imaginative and entertaining fantasy, elsewhere manages to be gripping, humorous and even fun—something you would not expect from a book that deals primarily with death and afterlife.  I think that the book will have wide appeal, definitely for fantasy fans, but also for those who like realistic fiction; Liz’s dreams and worries, even after death, will be familiar to most teens.

Name: Danielle
Branch: Copley Square,  Young Adults Room

Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe.
Seventeen-year-old Jasmine (Jas) and her three best friends engage in amateur crime fighting and try to solve a mystery involving a famous model, her family, and a three-legged cat in Las Vegas.  A truly hilarious novel.

Looking for Alaska by John Green. This is my favorite book of the year.  Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's life has been one long nonevent - no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends, that is until he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama and meets Chip and Alaska.  As the school year unfolds he experiences love and loss and learns how to pull off the best prank in the school’s history. 

The Boyfriend List: (15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver) by E. Lockhart. The title pretty much sums the book up.  Ruby Oliver is having a tough year at Tate Prep. Through a series of social debacles, she loses her best friends, her boyfriend, her dignity, and the respect of her fellow classmates in less than two weeks' time.  She winds up in therapy and begins to reflect on the her ex boyfriends and the patterns in her life.  This is perfect for fans of Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson.

Love Sick by Jake Coburn. What do you get when you cross a recovering alcoholic and a bulimic?  An oddly touching love story about two addicts trying to survive their freshman year of college.  Ted loses his basketball scholarship after he drives into a tree and shatters his knee. The only way he can afford college is if he agrees to spy on Erica, and his tuition is paid for by her wealthy father.

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L Going. Troy Billings is a 300-pound high school senior contemplating suicide when he meets Curt MacCrae, a homeless teenage musical genius who decides that Troy is just the drummer he's looking for to start a new band.  An unlikely friendship blossoms and Troy fries to help Curt kick his drug habit and return to school.

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. Before it was a movie, Hoot was an even funnier ecological mystery involving endangered owls, an evil pancake house, corrupt politicians, and three middle-school students out to save the little guys.  When Roy moves from Montana to Florida, he is miserable.  Then he meets Beatrice the Bear and her brother Mullet Fingers.  Together, they start a campaign to keep Mother Paula’s All American Pancake House from breaking ground where a colony of endangered burrowing owls lives.

Wasted: a Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher. Marya was a bulimic as a forth grader and anorexic by 15.  She was hospitalized several times and by the time she entered college she weighed 52 pounds.  Her gripping memoir follows her descent into anorexia and bulimia and her journey to seek help and recover.  Her struggle and determination to beat this illness are amazing.  

Name: Anne K.
Branch: East Boston Branch

A Girl Called Zippy  and  She Got Up Off The Couch, both by Haven Kimmel.  These are hilarious.  They are memoirs of growing up in a tiny town as the youngest child in a really wacky family.  "Zippy" goes up to about age seven, and "Couch" continues the family's story and becomes something deeper as Zippy begins to understand what is going on around her, things hinted at in the first book.  But they are truly laugh-out-loud funny-and I found myself reading aloud from it to anyone who would listen.  I want her autograph!!

Name: Barbara
Branch: Copley Square,  Young Adults Room

Miss Manners Rescues Civilization: from sexual harassment, frivolous lawsuits, dissing, and other lapses in civility, by Judith Martin.  I never would have guessed that a book about etiquette, of all things, would be funny and entertaining, but Miss Manners knows what she's doing, and picks some champion questions from the clueless to help everyone else find his or her way around. (BJ1853 M297)

13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? by Neil Howe and Bill Strauss.  Granted, this one's more about my generation than yours, but it's a painless look at history, with lots of good cartoons and comments. (E168.12 H69 1993)  You can also try its "sequel" about your generation, Millennials Rising.  (HQ796 H74)

The Stand, by Stephen King.  The whole world is wiped out by a plague, except for a handful of survivors.  Naturally, they start fighting with each other.  Terrific, well-imagined, well-written.  Some content warnings about violence and language, but I love this book a lot.

Different Seasons, also by Stephen King. This is the Stephen King book for people who don't like Stephen King.  The novellas that became the movies Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption (The Body and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, respectively) are in here, though if they make you forget he's a horror author, there's also the incredibly creepy Apt Pupil to remind you.