While I was growing up, my dad often talked to me about the books that grabbed him when he was a boy. He did well enough in school, but he wasn’t the studious type my mother was. The books that drew him in were not those that took twenty pages to get moving. As a boy, he loved Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer or Jules Verne’s Sci-fi. As a teen, he continued to gravitate to novels full of adventure and humor, those that let him escape.

When a friend of mine recently asked for some boy book recommendations for a sixteen year old, I tried to think of YA books that would have been up Dad’s alley. However, the sixteen year old was not into fantasy or sci-fi, so I limited my list to realistic fiction—current and past—with the reluctant reader in mind. Please share some favorites that grabbed you.

1. The Pigman by Paul Zindel

2. 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher

3. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

4. Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan

5. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

6. Liar by Justine Larbalestier

7. Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner

8. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

9. Break by Hannah Moskowitz

10. The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff

For much of my childhood, we were a household of females. My mom, my sister and I lived in a house where nobody left the seat up, most of the dirty clothes actually made it into the hamper and nobody knew how to make realistic machine-gun sounds or burp the alphabet on cue. We also read a lot. Fate now smirks when she sees me, as I am the only female in a house full of males – even the dog and both of the cats are boys. The presence of several Y chromosomes in my life has made me… Continue reading

• Publication Season/Year: Summer, 2009
• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Release Date: August 11, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 9780385737333
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

Someone is killing boys in a small town. The murder weapon is a truck, and the only protection is a curfew enacted to keep kids off the streets. But it's summer-and that alone is worth the risk of staying out late for James, Willie, and Reggie. Willie, who lost his arm in the first hit-and-run attack, finds it hard to keep up with his two best friends as they leave childhood behind. All of them are changing, hounded by their parents, hunted by the killer, and haunted… Continue reading