Fiction for
Grades 9 & 10
(ONLY for 9A, 9H, & 10A students)
ONLY need to choose ONE book from either FICTION, NON-FICTION, or GRAPHIC NOVELS
By Brendan Kiely & Jason Reynolds
"When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints."
Subjects: Race relations, High schools, Law enforcement, Racism, Schools, Adolescent interpersonal relations, African Americans, Fathers, Politics, Violence
|
By Jacqueline Woodson
"After losing her mother and grandmother during Hurricane Katrina, Laurel moves to another town and becomes a methamphetamine addict."
Subjects: Drug abuse, Addiction, Grief, Runaways, Hurricanes, Social conditions
|
"Hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful Internet company, Mae Holland begins to questions her luck as life beyond her job grows distant, a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, and her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public."
Subjects: Technology, Internet, Computers, Social conditions, Employment, Identity
|
City of the Beasts
Memories of the Eagle and the Jaguar Series #1
"When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his individualistic grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid Beast in the Amazon, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians."
Subjects: Quests, Self-discovery, Supernatural, Monsters, Teenage adventurers, Endangered ecosystems, Grandmothers, Greed in men, Indigenous peoples
|
by David Benioff
"When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible."
Subjects: Grandfathers, Survival, Betrayal, Coming of age, Russians, Wars, Nazis, Quests, World War II
|
Code Name Verity Series #1
by Elizabeth Wein
"After crash-landing in France in 1943 and being captured by Nazis, a female wireless operator for the British (who goes by Queenie, Eva, Verity, and various other aliases) reveals bits of code in exchange for reprieve from torture...and to postpone her execution."
Subjects: Espionage, Prisoners of war, Survival, History, Friendship, Suspense, Airplanes, Women, Nazis, Germans, World War II
|
Defending Jacob
"Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next. His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student."
Subjects: Murder, Crime, Father-son relations, Marriage, Mystery, Death, Mother-son relations, Family relations, Betrayal, Families, Family secrets, Suburban life
|
"Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try."
Subjects: Love, Friendship, Abuse, Culture, Dating (Social customs), High schools, Dysfunctional families
|
"Overburdened by his parents' bickering and a bully's attacks, fifteen-year-old Lucky Linderman begins dreaming of being with his grandfather, who went missing during the Vietnam War, but during a visit to Arizona, his aunt and uncle and their beautiful neighbor, Ginny, help him find a new perspective."
Subjects: Self confidence, Family life, Bullying, Dreams, Grandfathers, Missing persons, Vietnam War
|
by Davida Wills Hurwin
"Tells, in two voices, of events leading up to a 1980 incident in which fourteen-year-old Jason, a gay youth surviving on the streets as a prostitute, and seventeen-year-old Doug, a hate-filled punk rocker, have a fateful meeting in a Los Angeles alley."
Subjects: Prejudice, LGBTQ+, Family, Drug abuse, Urban life, Bullying and bullies, Family problems, Punk culture, Survival Teenage boys
|
"Presents a novel based on the life of the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed five hundred miles as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children."
Subjects: Family, Women, Marriage, Determination, Growing up, Ranches, Survival, Teachers
|
"As her high school graduation draws near, Glory O'Brien begins having powerful and terrifying visions of the future as she struggles with her long-buried grief over her mother's suicide."
Subjects: Women, Mental disorders, Depression (Mood disorder), Suicide, History, Social conditions, Single parent family, Best friends, Fathers and daughters, Feminism, Frenemies, Friendship, Survivors, Teenage girls, Visions, Women's rights
|
Talents series #1
"A 13-year-old boy who has been sent to an alternative school for mouthing off, discovers that he and his classmates have psychic powers."
Subjects: Educational environment, Science fiction, Alternative schools, Extrasensory perception, Juvenile delinquents, Paranormal phenomena, Paraphysics, Psychic ability, Psychokinesis, Supernatural, Teenage boy psychics, Misfits
|
Middle-Earth Universe series & History of the Hobbit series
"Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return."
Subjects: Adventurers, Adventure, Courage, Fantasy, Questing, Heroes and heroines, Magic, Self-discovery, Travelers, Wizards, Dragons, Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits
And much more!
|
"After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness."
Subjects: Parent-child relations, Friendship, Love, Mystery fiction, Death, Bank robberies, Family relationships, Heroes and heroines, Losers, Purpose in life, Self-esteem, Taxicab drivers, Young men
|
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
by Sherman Alexie
"In this brilliantly amusing fiction, Alexie artfully couples the harsh details of the struggle to survive on the Spokane Indian Reservation with a wry and often wise humour."
Subjects: Cultural conflict, Identity, Native American reservations, Native North Americans, Native American families, Race relations, Spokane Indian Reservation, Spokane Indians
|
by Francisco X. Stork
"Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mailroom of a corporate law firm."
Subjects: Learning disorders, Adolescence, Work environment, Friendship, Love, Father-son relations, Asperger's syndrome, Autism, Ethics. Injustice, Law firms, Mexican Americans, Romantic love, Teenage boys
|
by Patricia McCormick
"While recuperating in a Baghdad hospital from a traumatic brain injury sustained during the Iraq War, eighteen-year-old soldier Matt Duffy struggles to recall what happened to him and how it relates to his ten-year-old friend, Ali."
Subjects: Military life, Military science, Military bases, Wars, Courage, Trust (Psychology), Brain injury, Iraq War, 2003-2011, Memory, Soldiers, War
|
"After a zombie attack, Wanda Mayhall rescues a near-dead infant on the side of a frozen Iowa highway and decides to raise him without telling the authorities, but as the boy gets older he realizes that there are other living dead in the world like him."
Subjects: Apocalypse, Zombies, Supernatural, Fantasy, Brothers and sisters, Civil war, Human nature, Miracles, Mothers and daughters
|
by Ernest Cline
"Immersing himself in a mid-twenty-first-century technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty, and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's creator."
Subjects: Virtual reality, Popular culture, Lotteries, Contests, Futuristic society, Adolescent interpersonal relations, Adolescence, Internet, Dystopias, Popular culture, Quests, Social networks, Teenage boys, Virtual reality
|
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
"Two novellas and one short story, based on the author's own experiences, center on a young man's discovery of life and art in the woods of western Montana."
Subjects: Short stories, Western fiction, Family, Love, Fly fishing
|
"When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again."
Subjects: Coming of age, Track and field, Sports, Accidents, Medical care, Surgery, Friendship, High schools, Prosthesis, Teenage girl athletes
|
"A breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years-from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives-the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness-are inextricable from the history playing out around them."
Subjects: Abuse, Family relations, Friendship, Marriage, Women, Afghan War, 2001-, Generation gap, Intergenerational friendship, Islam and women, Loss (Psychology), Self-sacrifice, Violence against women, War
|
"Abandoned by their artist mother at the age of 12, Bean and her older sister, Liz, are sent to live in the decaying antebellum mansion of their widowed uncle, where they learn the truth about their parents and take odd jobs to earn extra money before an increasingly withdrawn Liz has a life-shattering experience."
Subjects: Coming of age, Sisters, Mothers, Abuse, Family relations, Intergenerational relations, Family secrets, Mothers and daughters, Uncle and niece, Self-discovery, Sisters, Small towns
|
"Sixteen-year-old, not-so-openly-gay Simon Spier is blackmailed into playing wingman for his classmate or else his sexual identity--and that of his pen pal--will be revealed."
Subjects: Sexuality, LGBTQ+, High schools, Friendship, Interpersonal relations, Coming of age, Pen pals, Secrets, Teenage romance
|
by Sharon G. Flake
"Thirteen-year-old Maleeka, uncomfortable because her skin is extremely dark, meets a new teacher and makes some discoveries about how to love who she is and what she looks like."
Subjects: African Americans, Childhood, Peer pressure, Self love, Self confidence, Teacher-student relations, Teachers
|
Alex Rider Series #1
"After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6."
Subjects: Orphans, Spies, Terrorism, Computers, Intelligence service, MI6, Teenage boy
|
by Elizabeth LaBan
"While preparing for the most dreaded assignment at the prestigious Irving School, the Tragedy Paper, Duncan gets wrapped up in the tragic tale of Tim Macbeth, a former student who had a clandestine relationship with the wrong girl, and his own ill-fated romance with Daisy."
Subjects: Boarding schools, Adolescent interpersonal relations, Dating (Social customs), Friendship, Albinos and albinism, Private schools, Research papers
|
"This brilliant and heartbreaking novel tells the story of a prestigious family living on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Full of love, lies, secrets, no shortage of family dysfunction, and a shocking twist that you won’t see coming. "
Subjects: Family relations, Wealth, Cousins, Accidents, Memory, Mystery, Suspense, Friendship, Interpersonal relations, Amnesia, Teenage romance
|
"A biographical novel traces the story of Valentino Achak Deng, who as a boy of seven was separated from his family when his village in southern Sudan was attacked by government helicopters and became one of the estimated 17,000 "lost boys of Sudan" before relocating from a Kenyan refugee camp to Atlanta in 2001."
Subjects: Refugees, Belonging, Civil War, Father-separated boys, Globalization, Loss (Psychology), Poverty, Sudan, Survival, Voyages and travels
|
by Fonda Lee
"As seventeen-year-old Carr 'the Raptor' Luka rises to fame in the weightless combat sport of zeroboxing, he learns a devastating secret that jeopardizes not only his future in the sport, but interplanetary relations."
Subjects: Boxers (Sports), Boxing, Fame, Genetic engineering, Martians, Space stations, Teenage boys
|
Any questions about the website? Please direct all questions to the ORRHS Library email. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
|