Announcing YALSA’s 2019 Selected Lists/A 2020 Update

Our 2019 Amazing Audiobooks, Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Great Graphic Novels for Teens, and Best Fiction for Young Adults lists are now completed! (BFYA will announce their top ten after the teen feedback session at ALA Midwinter in Seattle.) Also, if you’re interested in titles from past lists, please check out our Teen Bookfinder App! Check out the lists now as PDFs below or listed individually on the YALSA site.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, November 29 Edition

Crush by Svetlana Chmakova
JY
Publication Date: October 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0316363242

No one wants to mess with Jorge Ruiz. Even though he is the biggest kid at Berrybrooke Middle School, Jorge doesn’t want to fight. In fact, he uses his size to help protect other kids from bullying. He just wants to play baseball and hang out with his two best friends, Olivia and Garrett. Middle school isn’t so bad for Jorge . . . until he realizes he has massive crush on shy, sweet Jazmine. Suddenly he is unable to speak, or even think, whenever she is around. And when Garrett wants to spend more time with the jerky football boys, and Olivia doesn’t want to be around Garrett anymore, Jorge doesn’t know how he will survive all the drama of middle school.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, November 15 Edition

Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal
Drawn & Quarterly
Publication Date: September 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1770463356

After a birth defect wipes out the entire male population and the world is set into a post-apocalyptic environment, women are left to rebuild society. Woman World shows what this possibility could look like and does so with wit, dark humor and honesty in a collection of short comics. The reader follows one village in its rebuilding phase, with only one woman having lived through the dying off of men, and weaves current pop culture throughout the narrative. Woman World asks important questions such as: Will a population of just women be peaceful? Will they have the same romantic problems? Were all men like Paul Blart, Mall Cop? Should their new flag depict Beyonce’s thighs?

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, November 8 Edition

The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: September 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-81015-1

Don Brown’s latest graphic novel gives a basic description of the war in Syria that has caused millions of Syrians to flee the country and become refugees in neighboring countries and Europe along with the war’s political, geographic, and cultural implications. Through quotes from refugees the book shows how they have suffered in their home country and how they are suffering as refugees in other countries. Resources include a thorough bibliography and footnotes.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, November 1 Edition

The Bride was a Boy by Chii
Seven Seas
Publication Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1626928886

At a gathering of friends, Chii meets a young man who instantly falls in love with her, but Chii is hesitant to date him because she doesn’t quite feel the same way. After a few informal dates, however, she finds herself really falling for him.There is just one problem; he wants her to be his girlfriend, but he doesn’t know that she is in the middle of her gender transition. Afraid of losing him but also afraid of him not knowing the truth, she finally tells him that she was assigned male at birth which, to her surprise, doesn’t phase him in the least. With the start of their relationship, Chii finds herself on the long path to legally changing her gender and to becoming a bride!

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, October 25 Edition

Betty and Veronica by Adam Hughes
Archie Comics
Publication Date: November 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1682559857

The Archieverse puts the best friendship of America’s sweethearts, Betty and Veronica, to the test in this mini series. When Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe is forced to go out of business in favor of corporate coffee chain, Kweekwegs, the two friends find themselves on opposite sides of a battle neither is willing to lose. With only three issues, the volume is bolstered by Issue 12 of Jughead.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, October 11 Edition

Stephen McCranie’s Space Boy, vol. 1 by Stephen McCranie
Dark Horse Books
Publication Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1506706481

Amy has lived her life on a far away mining colony, but when her dad loses his job, the family must return to planet Earth, a place Amy has only read about and seen through the media. To do this she must be in cryogenic sleep for thirty years. When she and her family arrive, they must navigate a new and different world, and one that does not contain Amy’s best friend Jemmah, who is now an adult back on the mining colony. Amy also has synesthesia, which gives her the ability to attach flavors to people. Her mom is mint and her dad is like hot chocolate. At her new school she meets a boy who has no flavor. She is both scared and curious. How will she survive in this strange new Earth? Will she ever be able to reconnect with Jemmah?

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, October 4 Edition

Orphans, Vol. 1: The Beginning by Roberto Recchioni and Emiliano Mammucari
Lion Forge
Publication Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1942367178

When an energy beam strikes the Earth, it kills a sixth of the world’s population. It was clearly an act of war by an alien planet. A scientist and a colonel gather together many of the surviving orphaned children to turn them into soldiers to invade the alien planet. The training is difficult and not everyone will survive, but after several years, they have created an elite force of soldiers. When they invade the planet they find a strange alien life form that has the ability to appear out of nowhere and kill without the use of weapons. The reader follows six orphans, all from Spain, as they figure out what they are dealing with and how to survive in this harsh environment, while protecting each other too. Each of the three chapters in this volume go back and forth between the original devastation of Earth, the training camp and the current invasion.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, September 27 Edition

Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition by Julia Kaye
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Publication Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1449489625

It took Julia years to understand herself as a trans individual and that she needed to transition in order to be happy. As a way to help herself and others, she decided to create a graphic diary of the first year of her transition and openly share her experiences. From exhilarating moments where sales people happily help her with discovering new body care products to a family member who will no longer acknowledge her, Julia chronicles the complexity of her everyday feelings in these straightforward yet powerful comic strips.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, September 20 Edition

What Does Consent Really Mean? by Pete and Thalia Wallis, Illustrated by Joseph Wilkins
Singing Dragon
Publication date: November 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1848193307

While heading home from school one day, a coed group of friends talks about consent: what does it really mean, and how does it apply to their lives? As they talk, it becomes clear that guys and girls face different societal pressures. However, the group quickly realizes that neither gender is exempt from the negative effects of peer pressure, pornography, and media portrayals of gender roles.

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