1. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in her decaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.
(Science Fiction)

2. by Laurie Halse Anderson
Fever 1793
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in (Historical Fiction)

3. Flygirl
by Sherri L. Smith
During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Air Force Service Pilots.
(Historical fiction)

4. Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes
Mentally retarded Charlie Gordon participates in an experiment which turns him into a genius but only temporarily.

5. Hope Was Here
by Joan Bauer
When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.
(Newbery Honor Book)

6. The House of the Scorpion
by Nancy Farmer
In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patrón, the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.
(Science Fiction)
(Newbery Honor Book)

7. How Angel Peterson Got His Name and Other Outrageous Tales About Extreme Sports by Gary Paulsen
Author Gary Paulsen relates tales from his youth in a small town in northwestern Minnesota in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as skiing behind a souped-up car and imitating daredevil Evel Knievel.
(Biography)

8. I Know What You Did Last Summer
by Lois Duncan
Four teen-agers who have desperately tried to conceal their responsibility for a hit-and-run accident are pursued by a mystery figure seeking revenge.
(Mystery)

9. by Rita Williams-Garcia
One Crazy Summer
by Rita Williams-Garcia
In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.
(Historical fiction)

10. Surviving the Applewhites
by Stephanie S. Tolan
Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

11. Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements
When fifteen-year-old Bobby wakes up and finds himself invisible, he and his parents and his new blind friend Alicia try to find out what caused his condition and how to reverse it.
(Science fiction)

12. Travel Team
by Michael Lupica
After he is cut from his travel basketball team--the very same team that his father once led to national prominence--twelve-year-old Danny Walker forms his own team of cast-offs that might have a shot at victory.
(Sports-Fiction)

13. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
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.
(Science Fiction)

14. Where the Red Fern Grows: the Story of Two Dogs and a Boy
by Wilson Rawls
The adventures of a ten-year-old boy and the two dogs he bought with money he had earned.

15. The Wreckers
by Iain Lawrence
Shipwrecked after a vicious storm, fourteen-year-old John Spencer attempts to save his father and himself while also dealing with an evil secret about the Cornish coastal town where they are stranded.