The winner of the 2009-2010 Georgia Peach Book Award has been announced, and it will not come as any surprise to our DRMS readers. This year’s winner is a Dean Rusk favorite, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Another favorite, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, was selected as an honor book, along with Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. If you haven’t read these books yet, you are so behind the times. Stop by the media center the minute you get back from spring break and ask to check them out. We also have Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire, along with City of Bones sequels City of Ashes and City of Glass.
Along with the announcement of this year’s winners comes the release of next year’s Georgia Peach Book Award nominees. Some of our Dean Rusk favorites are included in this list, including The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart, North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley, and Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. Here’s the full list (slide show and content courtesy of the Georgia Library Media Association Peach Book Award Committee); not all of these are appropriate for middle school, but we’ll be ordering all those that are as soon as possible, if we don’t already have them.
In complete denial that she is pregnant, straight-A student and star athlete Devon Davenport leaves her baby in the trash to die, and after the baby is discovered, Devon is accused of attempted murder.
- Bonechiller by Graham McNamee:
A soul-stealing beast of the ice attacks Danny, who enlists three friends to face off against this demon linked to disappearing teens from a small Ontario town for centuries. Two will lose themselves to the creature if they can’t understand and defeat him in time.
- Brutal by Michael Harmon:
Forced to leave Los Angeles for life in a quiet California wine town with a father she has never known, rebellious 16-year-old Poe Holly rails against a high school system that allows elite students special privileges and tolerates bullying of those who are different.
- Burn by Suzanne Phillips:
Bullied constantly during his freshman year in high school, Cameron’s anger and isolation grow, leading to violent, destructive, and even deadly consequences.
- Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford:
Awkward freshman Will Carter endures many painful moments during his first year of high school before realizing that nothing good comes easily, focus is everything, and the payoff can be incredible.
- The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart:
Smart, witty female Frankie attempts to take on or even take over a secret, all-male society at her exclusive prep school, and her antics may unsettle not just the smug boys from the group but affect her own life forever.
- Dream Factory by Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler:
After the costumed character actors at Disney World go on strike, teenagers Ella, Luke, and Cassie replace them, giving them an opportunity to learn about love, the amusement park, and themselves.
- Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith:
Ida Mae Jones is a Louisiana girl who longs to be a pilot when America enters World War II. She is pretty and smart, but she has two huge strikes against her. She is black AND a woman, but if she can pass as white, she can at least fly.
- The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan:
Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead.
- Hold Still by Nina LaCour:
Caitlin wrestles with her feelings of devastation and helplessness after her friend Ingrid commits suicide, and she turns to her family and newfound friends for help while encountering love, broadening her horizons, and using Ingrid’s journal to heal.
- If I Stay by Gayle Forman:
While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weighs whether to live with her grief–or join her family in death, leaving her boyfriend and the world.
- Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen:
Plagued by Tourette’s syndrome and a stepfather who despises him, Sam meets an old man in his small Minnesota town who sends him on a road trip designed to help him discover the truth about his life.
- King of the Screwups by K. L. Going:
Liam Geller is one of the most popular boys in school but can’t seem to do anything right in the eyes of his father; so he goes to live with his homosexual, rocker uncle who helps him to understand that there is much more to him than his father will ever see.
- Muchacho by LouAnne Johnson:
Living in a neighborhood of drug dealers and gangs in New Mexico, high school junior Eddie Corazon, a juvenile delinquent-in-training, falls in love with a girl who inspires him to rethink his life and his choices.
- North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley:
Terra, a sensitive, artistic high school senior born with a facial port-wine stain, struggles with issues of inner and outer beauty with the help of a new Goth friend named Jacob.
- The Orange Houses by Paul Griffin:
Tamika, a 15-year-old hearing-impaired girl; Jimmi, an 18-year-old veteran who stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication; and sixteen-year-old Fatima, an illegal immigrant from Africa, meet and connect in their Bronx, New York neighborhood with devastating results.
- Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater:
In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf who, in his turn, has been watching her with increasing intensity.
- Skinned by Robin Wasserman:
Lia Kahn’s family pays for the most advanced medical technology to save her when her body is devastated in a horrible accident, but when the operations are complete, Lia remains alive, but her body does not.
- Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson:
Eighteen-year-old Lia comes to terms with her best friend’s death from anorexia as she struggles with the same disorder.
- The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin and John Busby:
Father and daughter share their memories of the challenges they faced after being forced to go into hiding in order to protect themselves from a killer who had already shot John, a police officer, once and was determined to finish the job.
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