South Carolina Association of School Librarians
Young Adult Book Award Nominees
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13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson  (317 pages)

SUMMARY 
When seventeen-year-old Ginny receives a packet of mysterious envelopes from her favorite aunt, she leaves New Jersey to criss-cross Europe on a sort of scavenger hunt that transforms her life. 

Caught in the Act by Peter Moore  (260 pages)

SUMMARY 
Everyone believes that sophomore honors student Ethan Lederer is a top-notch scholar and a great guy, but a new student helps Ethan to discover and disclose that he is just acting a role, even as she reveals her own mental instability.     

Code Orange by Caroline B. Cooney  (200 pages)

SUMMARY 
While conducting research for a school paper on smallpox, Mitty finds an envelope containing 100-year-old smallpox scabs and fears that he has infected himself and all of New York City.    
 

Dark Angel by David Klass  (311 pages) 

SUMMARY 
When his older brother is released from prison, seventeen-year-old Jeff's family secret is revealed, causing upheaval in his home, school and love life.  

Double Helix by Nancy Wilson  (252 pages)

SUMMARY 
Eighteen-year-old Eli discovers a shocking secret about his life and his family while working for a Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose specialty is genetic engineering.    

Elsewhere by Gabrielle. Zevin  (275 pages)

SUMMARY 
After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to "live."   

Fake ID by Walter Sorrells  (313 pages)

SUMMARY 
After a lifetime of moving and assuming new identities, sixteen-year-old Chass begins to piece together the past that haunts her and her mother which involves a mysterious tape, a deceased popular singer, and the secrets of several people in a small Alabama town.   
 

Invisible by Pete Hautman  (149 pages)

SUMMARY 
Doug and Andy are unlikely best friends--one a loner obsessed by his model trains, the other a popular student involved in football and theater--who grew up together and share a bond that nothing can sever.
 

Jude by Kate Morgenroth  (277 pages)

SUMMARY 
Still reeling from his drug-dealing father's murder, moving in with the wealthy mother he never knew, and transferring to a private school, fifteen-year-old Jude is tricked into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit.   
 

Names Will Never Hurt Me by Jaime Adoff  (185 pages)

SUMMARY 
Several high school students relate their feelings about school, themselves, and events as they unfold on the fateful one-year anniversary of the killing of a fellow student.   

Prom by Laurie H. Anderson  (215 pages)

SUMMARY 
Eighteen-year-old Ash wants nothing to do with senior prom, but when disaster strikes and her desperate friend, Nat, needs her help to get it back on track, Ash's involvement transforms her life.  
 

Rob&Sara.com by P.J. Petersen  (210 pages)

SUMMARY 
Rob, who lives at a school for troubled teenagers, and Sara, the 16-year-old daughter of an army colonel, meet in a poetry chat-room and develop a close relationship via email.    

Runner by Carl Deuker  (216 pages)

SUMMARY 
Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk.  

The Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn  (222 pages) 

SUMMARY 
Fiona is Safe-Keeper in the small village of Tambleham, where neighbors and strangers alike come one by one, in secret, to tell her things they dare not share with anyone else.  

Stealing Henry by Caroline MacCullough  (196 pages)

SUMMARY 
Seventeen-year-old Savannah, fed up with her violent stepfather, hits him over the head with a frying pan and takes to the road with her eight-year-old half-brother in a journey that echoes in reverse the one her mother Alice took as a young unwed mother running away from home.

Things Change by Patrick Jones  (216 pages) 

SUMMARY
Sixteen-year-old Johanna, one of the best students in her class, develops a passionate attachment for troubled seventeen-year-old Paul and finds her plans for the future changing in unexpected ways. .....

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer  (498 pages) 

SUMMARY 
When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.  

Uglies by Scott Westfield  (425 pages) 

SUMMARY 
Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.  
 

Upstream by Melissa Lion  (149 pages) 

SUMMARY
After her boyfriend is killed in a hunting accident, Alaska high-school-senior Marty, with help from her mother and two younger sisters, tries to get over her grief and begin a new life.   

Who am I Without Him? by Sharon Flake  (220 pages)

SUMMARY 
Presents ten short stories about teenage girls struggling with issues of self-worth.  

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