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The Best Books for Young Adults committee of the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the ¾«¶«´«Ã½, has chosen the following books as Top Ten Young Adult Books:

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January 2003

Anderson, Laurie Halse.
Catalyst. Penguin Putnam/Viking, $17.99 (0-670-03566-1)


Kate Malone, the preacher’s daughter, learns there is more to life than her obsession about getting into MIT when she becomes involved with her tragedy–stricken neighbors.




Anderson, M. T.
Feed. Candlewick Press, $16.99 (0-7636-1726-1)


Titus and Violet are teenagers living in a future society where corporations define the lives and lifestyles of Americans, and where it has become common for prosperous parents to endow their newborn children with Feed: mini–computers with wireless Internet connections that are implanted in their heads.

Farmer, Nancy.
The House of the Scorpion. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum/A Richard Jackson Book, $17.95 (0-689-85222-3)


Matt is a clone. Livestock. No better than an animal. Generally, human clones have their brains destroyed at birth, but for some reason, Matt’s patron has left his mind in tact. What could he want from him?

Frank, E. R.
America. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum/A Richard Jackson Book, $18.00 (0-689-84729-7)


A young man named America gets "lost" in the social welfare system and after a series of foster homes, hospitals, and suicide attempts, he meets a caring psychiatrist who refuses to give up on him.

Korman, Gordon.
Son of the Mob. Hyperion Books for Children, $15.99 (0-7868-0769-5); lib. ed., $15.95 (0-7868-2616-9)


The ultimate Romeo and Juliet tale. The son of the mob falls in love with the daughter of the FBI. Even communications are a problem when your girlfriend’s dad is the agent in charge of bugging your house.

Lawrence, Iain.
The Lightkeeper's Daughter. Random House/Delacorte Press, $16.95 (0-385-72925-1); lib. ed., $18.99 (0-385-90062-7)


A teenage mother tries to reconcile with her lightouse–keeping parents, despite feeling that it was their remote and lonely lifestyle that led to her brother’s death.

Moore, Christopher.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. HarperCollins/William Morrow, $25.95 (0-380-97840-7)


WWJD? At age six? Thirteen? Eighteen? Restoring lizards to life and hanging out with Biff and Maggie are only a couple of His activities.

Nelson, Peter.
Left for Dead: A Young Man's Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis. illus. Random House/Delacorte Press, $15.95 (0-385-72959-6); lib. ed., $17.99 (0-385-90033-3)


The USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine in the last days of World War II. Over fifty years later, a teen works with the survivors of the disaster to clear the name of the Indianapolis’s captain, who was wrongly court martialed for the tragedy.

Nye, Naomi Shihab.
19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. HarperCollins/Greenwillow, $16.95 (0-06-009765-5); lib. ed., $16.89 (0-06-009766-3)


Nye's father is Palestinian and her mother is German-American, so she grew up in St. Louis, San Antonio, and Jerusalem. Her poetry includes stories of the Middle East through the eyes of an American child, as well as of America through the eyes of Middle Easterners.

Partridge, Elizabeth.
This Land Was Made For You and Me: The Life & Songs of Woody Guthrie. illus. Penguin Putnam/Viking, $21.99 (0-670-03535-1)


The tragic life story of the rambling folk singer Woody Guthrie, author of “This Land is Your Land.”