Books for Teens
Suggested Books
The DC Public Library and the D.C. Public Schools have teamed up to suggest books you might enjoy. The lists include a variety of books for seventh to 12th graders, to satisfy every reading interest.
- Books for Seventh Grade
- Books for Eighth Grade
- Books for Ninth Grade
- Books for 10th Grade
- Books for 11th Grade
- Books for 12th Grade
Award Winners
Find an award-winning book to read by visiting the links below. Please note that the library may not always have every title available. Award lists are updated annually.- ALA Top Ten Young Adult Books
- Alex Award Winners
- Américas Book Award
- Margaret A. Edwards Award Winners
- National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
- Printz Awards
- Pura Belpré Award
Suggested Books for Seventh Grade
- I Am the Darker Brother by Arnold Adoff
- Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World by Jennifer Armstrong
- Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer
- Bowman’s Store: A Journey to Myself by Joseph Bruchac
- The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
- I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
- A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
- Phineas Gage by John Fleischman
- Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman
- Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman
- Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery by Russell Freedman
- Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green
- Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix
- The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig
- Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
- Totally Joe by James Howe
- The Dream Keeper and Other Poems by Langston Hughes
- The Diary of Latoya Hunter by Latoya Hunter
- Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing by Paul B. Janeczko
- Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang
- The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph
- Angels of Mercy: The Army Nurses of World War II by Betsy Kuhn
- Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
- Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton
- Rules by Cynthia Lord
- Travel Team by Mike Lupica
- Hero-Type by Barry Lyga
- The Great Fire by Jim Murphy
- Journey to Jo’burg: A South African Story by Beverley Naidoo
- Zel by Donna Jo Napoli
- We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson
- Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Thunder Rolling in the Mountains by Scott O’Dell and Elizabeth Hall
- Rosa Parks: My Story by Rosa Parks
- The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick
- The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
- Walking to the Bus-Rider Blues by Harriette Gillen Robinet
- Esperanza Rising by Pamela Muñoz Ryan
- Small Steps by Louis Sachar
- The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
- Guys Write for Guys Read by Jon Scieszka
- To Dance: A Ballerina’s Graphic Novel by Siena Cherson Siegel
- Taking Sides by Gary Soto
- The Land by Mildred D. Taylor
Suggested Books for Eighth Grade
- Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement by Ann Bausum
- Tangerine by Edward Bloor
- Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos
- Jumping the Nail by Eve Bunting
- Gifted Hands by Ben Carson
- I, Too, Sing America by Catherine Clinton
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings
- The Ear, the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
- Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo by Zlata Filipovic
- Who Am I without Him?: Short Stories About Girls and the Boys in Their Lives by Sharon G. Flake
- Dateline: Troy by Paul Fleischman
- The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West by Sid Fleischman
- Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
- The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
- Anthony Burns by Virginia Hamilton
- Harlem Stomp! by Laban Carrick Hill
- The Demon in the Teahouse by Dorothy Hoobler
- The Misfits by James Howe
- California Blue by David Klass
- Wolf Tower by Tanith Lee
- Red Midnight by Ben Mikaelsen
- Harlem by Walter Dean Myers
- Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem by Marilyn Nelson
- The Chosen by Chaim Potok
- Jackie’s Nine: Jackie Robinson’s Values to Live By by Sharon Robinson
- Gandhi, Great Soul by John B. Severance
- Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones
- Living Up the Street by Gary Soto
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Iron West by Doug TenNapel
- Team Moon by Catherine Thimmesh
- Good-bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman
- The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
- The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography by Yoshiko Uchida
- A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
- Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren
- Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
- The Killer’s Cousin by Nancy Werlin
- Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
- Like Sisters on the Homefront by Rita Williams-Garcia
- Bat 6 by Virginia Euwer Wolff
- Hush by Jacqueline Woodson
- Dragonwings by Laurence Yep
Suggested Books for Ninth Grade
- Estrella’s Quinceañera by Malin Alegria
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
- The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
- Freeze Frame by Heidi Ayarbe
- Another Country by James Baldwin
- Tyrell by Coe Booth
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
- Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac
- The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy
- Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
- The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream by Sampson Davis and Others
- A Bone from a Dry Sea by Peter Dickinson
- Tears of a Tiger by Sharon Draper
- Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life by Russell Freedman
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life by Mae Jemison
- The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
- The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
- Jefferson’s Children by Shannon Lanier
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- Gold Dust by Chris Lynch
- Sorrow’s Kitchen: The Life and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston by Mary E. Lyons
- Beauty by Robin McKinley
- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
- Bad Boy, A Memoir by Walter Dean Myers
- A Step from Heaven by An Na
- Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson
- 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye
- An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio by Judith Ortiz Cofer
- Eragon by Christopher Paolini
- Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Unwind by Neal Shusterman
- Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
- The Pearl by John Steinbeck
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson
- The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin
- The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
- Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned by Judd Winick
- American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Suggested Books for 10th Grade
- A Death in the Family by James Agee
- Emma by Jane Austen
- A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
- Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals
- A Place Where the Sea Remembers by Sandra Benitez
- Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
- Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
- Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron
- Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- On the Street Where You Live by Mary Higgins Clark
- Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
- Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
- Neanderthal by John Darnton
- Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
- Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years by Sarah Louise Delany
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery by John Feinstein
- Bang! by Sharon G. Flake
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Marley & Me by John Grogan
- Hiroshima by John Hersey
- Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman
- Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
- Good Poems by Garrison Keillor
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
- The Color of Water by James McBride
- The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
- The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers
- Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
- Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
- In My Father’s House by Ann Rinaldi
- The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- As You Like It by William Shakespeare
- Report from Ground Zero by Dennis Smith
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Skim by Mariko Tamaki
- The Bomb by Theodore Taylor
- Extreme Sports by Joe Tomlinson
- Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- Fences by August Wilson
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
- Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
- The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Suggested Books for 11th Grade
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez
- Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
- All Souls’ Rising by Madison Smartt Bell
- When the Legends Die by Hal Borland
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg by Rick Bragg
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Woman Hollering Creek, and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
- A Cup of Tea, A Novel of 1917 by Amy Ephron
- Cover-up by John Feinstein
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
- Grendel by John Gardner
- Two Parties, One Tux and a Very Short Film About the Grapes of Wrath by Steven Goldman
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- The Big Sea: An Autobiography by Langston Hughes
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
- Wicked by Gregory Maguire
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud
- Madapple by Christina Meldrum
- Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
- The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
- A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- 1984 by George Orwell
- DC Noir by George Pelecanos
- When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
- The Wedding by Dorothy West
- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Suggested Books for 12th Grade
- In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade T. Bambara
- Frida: Viva La Vida! Long Live Life! by Carmen Bernier-Grand
- Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
- Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
- Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
- Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox
- The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
- Light in August by William Faulkner
- The Street Lawyer by John Grisham
- The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
- When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
- Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography edited by Andrew Helfer
- Beowulf by Gareth Hinds
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood by June Jordan
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Wheelchair Warrior: Gangs, Disability and Basketball by Melvin Juette and Ronald J. Berger
- The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
- Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathan McCall
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley
- The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
- The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
- Luna: A Novel by Julie Anne Peters
- The Street by Ann Petry
- My Jim by Nancy Rawles
- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
- What I Was by Meg Rosoff
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Rose that Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
- The Good Negress by A.J. Verdelle
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- Black and White by Paul Volponi
- Candide by Voltaire
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Once and Future King by T.H. White
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams





