Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker. 2010. 10th Grade.
In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.
Ties in with: 10th Grade English
2011 Printz winner – read Bacigalupi’s award speech here.
Winner of the 2011 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book, Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, 2011 Top Ten Best Fiction For Young Adults, nominee for the 2010 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Johnson, Angela. The First Part Last. 2010. 10th Grade
Bobby is your classic urban teenaged boy – impulsive, eager, restless. On his sixteenth birthday he gets some news from his girlfriend, Nia, that changes his life forever. She’s pregnant. Bobby is the father. Suddenly things like school and house parties and hanging with friends no longer seem important as they’re replaced by visits to Nia’s obstetrician and a social worker who says that the only way for Nia and Bobby to lead a normal life is to put their baby up for adoption.
Ties in with: 10th Grade English, Health, Biology
Winner of the 2004 Michael L. Printz Award, 2004 Coretta Scott King Award.
Kelly, Jacqueline. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. 2009. 7th Grade.
Curious about the grasshoppers in her backyard in rural Texas, eleven-year-old Calpurnia turns to her grandfather, an avid naturalist, for information and ends up with a new-found respect for the natural world, the way is operates, and the similarities it shares with her own ife as the only daughter in a family with six brothers, in this coming-of-age tale set in 1899.
Ties in with: 7th Grade English, Science, Social Studies
2010 Newbery Honor Book, 2009 Junior Library Guild selection.
Voorhoeve, Anne C. My Family for the War. 2012. 10th Grade.
Before the start of World War II, ten-year-old Ziska Mangold, who has Jewish ancestors but has been raised as a Protestant, is taken out of Nazi Germany on one of the Kindertransport trains, to live in London with a Jewish family, where she learns about Judaism and endures the hardships of war while attempting to keep in touch with her parents, who are trying to survive in Holland.
Ties in with: 10th Grade English, Social Studies
Winner of the 2013 Mildred L. Batchelder Award