1990s - YALSA Best Books for Young Adults - Handy Topics in the Curriculum Department - Research Guides at University of Nebraska Kearney (UNK)

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1999

Fiction
Nonfiction

Go and come back : a novel
The amazing true story of a teenage single mom
Rules of the road
Life in the fat lane
The Shakespeare stealer
Smack
Heroes : a novel
Someone like you
Love among the walnuts
The skin I'm in
Whirligig
Shadow spinner
The other Shepards
Among the hidden
Sunshine rider: the first vegetarian western
Kissing doorknobs
A life for a life
The maze
My Louisiana sky
Heaven
The falcon
There's a hair in my dirt: a worm's story
The wreckers
Dust devils
The sacrifice
The pirate's son
Petey
Sirena
The dark light
Tribes of Palos Verdes
Soldier's heart : a novel of the Civil War
A long way from Chicago : a novel in stories
Strays like us
Treasures in the dust
Zebra and other stories
A door near here
Choosing up sides
Hero
Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone
Hardcover edition
Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone
Paperback edition
Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone
Illustrated edition
Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone
Book on CD
Holes
Jungle dogs
Help wanted : short stories about young people working
I am Mordred
Spirit window
Making up Megaboy
Hard ball
The killer's cousin
To say nothing of the dog, or, How we found the bishop's bird stump at last
I rode a horse of milk white jade
If you come softly
Armageddon summer

Flash! the Associated Press covers the world
33 things every girl should know : stories, songs, poems, and smart talk by 33 extraordinary women
I, too, sing America : three centuries of African American poetry
Corpses, coffins, and crypts : a history of burial
Invisible enemies : stories of infectious disease
Martha Graham, a dancer's life
Modoc
The circuit : stories from the life of a migrant child
The Circuit : stories from the life of a migrant child
From slave ship to freedom road
No pretty pictures : a child of war
The shared heart : portraits and stories celebrating lesbian, gay, and bisexual young people
No more strangers now : young voices from a new South Africa
Young, Black, and determined: a biography
The space between our footsteps
War and the pity of war
Knots in my yo-yo string : the autobiography of a kid
Behind the mask : the life of Queen Elizabeth I
Lest we forget: the passage from Africa to slavery and emancipation
A lion's hunger: poems of first love

The iron ring
Joy school
Tangerine
Bone dance
Bull catcher
What girls learn
What child is this? : a Christmas story
Tenderness
Chasing Redbird
Trader
Painting the black
The window
Forged by fire
Seedfolks
Sons of liberty
Leaving Fishers
Flyers
Out of the dust
Bug park
The watcher
Cloudy in the west
Song in the silence
The woman in the wall
Blood and chocolate
Kinship
Someone to love
Leaving home : stories
Necessary roughness
Luckiest girl in the world
Ella enchanted
Secret diary of Anne Boleyn
When she was good
Swallowing stones
Rose daughter
Inside the walls of Troy
Jubilee journey
Stones in water
Shade's children
Bo easy answers: short stories about teenagers making tough choices
Dancing on the edge
Habibi
Peeling the onion
The war in Georgia
The Schernoff discoveries
The queen's man
The subtle knife
The Starlite Drive-in
Outrageously Alice
An acquaintance with darkness
Stranded in Harmony
The dark side of nowhere : a novel
The virtual war
Buried onions
Doing time : notes from the undergrad
Whistle me home
The true colors of Caitlynne Jackson
Working days: short stories about teenagers at work
Breakaway

Just people and other poems for young readers & Pen/pen/poem: a young writer's way to begin
Growing up in coal country
The seamstress : a memoir of survival
I have lived a thousand years : growing up in the Holocaust
Flight of passage
The company we keep : America's endangered species
Bound feet & western dress
Venus to the hoop
Triumphant spirit: portraits & stories of Holocaust survivors
Joycelyn Elders, M.D. : from sharecropper's daughter to surgeon general of the United States of America
Encyclopedia of the cat
Planet hunters: the search for other worlds
Charles A. Lindbergh : a human hero
Jump ball: a basketball season in poems
The taking of room 114: a hostage drama in poems
The human mind explained: an owner's guide to the mysteries of the mind
Imaginary animals
In a sacred manner I live : Native American wisdom
Red scarf girl : a memoir of the Cultural Revolution
Into thin air : a personal account of the Mount Everest disaster
Note: we do have the newer edition that includes a new afterword by the author
Harlem : a poem
Poetry after lunch: poems to read aloud
Over the top of the world : explorer Will Steger's trek across the Arctic
Little X: growing up in the nation of Islam
Leon's story

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1997

Voices from the streets: young former gang members tell their stories
Beyond the western sea, Bk.1. The escape from home
Lost years of Merlin
The China garden
The United States of poetry
Hard time : a real life look at juvenile crime and violence
The redemption of Christopher Columbus
My father's scar
Mama's girl
Another kind of Monday
Trout summer
The voice on the radio
We shall not be moved
An American hero : the true story of Charles A. Lindbergh
That summer
Bruises
A girl named Disaster
Dateline : Troy
The abracadabra kid : a writer's life
The life and death of Crazy Horse
The cuckoo's child
Nathan's run
Who killed Mr. Chippendale? : a mystery in poems
Wildside
Don't you dare read this, Mrs. Dunphrey
Running out of time
My sister's bones
Mr. Was
The music of dolphins
Far North
Land girls
The window
The Sandy Bottom orchestra
Danger zone
Amazing grace : the lives of children and the conscience of a nation
Into the wild
Johnny Voodoo
Run for your life
Winning ways : a photohistory of American women in sports
After the war
Rebels against slavery : American slave revolts
Adem's cross
Gideon's people
One more river to cross : an African American photograph album
Slam!
Song of the Magdalene
Sabriel
I feel a little jumpy around you : a book of her poems & his poems collected in pairs
Poetry in motion: one hundred poems from the subways and buses
Jip : his story
Puppies, dogs, and blue northers : reflections on being raised by a pack of sled dogs
The final journey
Don't think twice
The golden compass
Hang a thousand trees with ribbons : the story of Phillis Wheatley
Lost in place
Cowgirls
The sin eater
Liberating the ghosts: photographs and texts from the March of the Living
Another way to dance
Crash
Dangerous skies
The ornament tree
Rats saw God
The thief
Wrestling Sturbridge
I want to buy a vowel
Gulf
Belle Prater's boy
Fragments : memories of a wartime childhood

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1996

Fiction
Nonfiction

The king's shadow
American eyes: new Asian-American short stories for young adults
Rule of the bone
Thwonk
Squared circle
Baby be-bop
Between a rock and a hard place
I see the moon
An island like you : stories of the barrio
In the middle of the night
The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963
The midwife's apprentice
The longest memory
Damned strong love : the true story of Willi G. and Stefan K. : a novel
Tears of a tiger
Midshipman's hope
Ash
Truly grim tales
Indio
Getting Lincoln's goat
Mary Wolf
How far would you have gotten if I hadn't called you back?
A time for dancing : a novel
But can the phoenix sing?
Othello
Third and Indiana
Slot machine
Tomorrow, when the war began
Much ado about prom night
Drummers of Jericho
Under the mermaid angel
One bird
The war of Jenkins' ear
The last safe place on earth
Emperor mage
Dean Duffy
Relic
The only alien on the planet
Math curse
The bomb
Dancing pink flamingos and other stories
Companions of the night
Farm team
Like sisters on the homefront
From the notebooks of Melanin Sun

Slow dance heart break blues
Parallel journeys
Bearing witness : stories of the Holocaust
Navajo : visions and voices across the Mesa
In these girls, hope is a muscle
We are witnesses : five diaries of teenagers who died in the Holocaust
Abigail Adams : witness to a revolution
An American safari : adventures on the North American prairie
Wings of morning: the story of the last American bomber shot down over Germany in World War II
Science fiction : the illustrated encyclopedia
Rosie the riveter : women working on the home front in World War II
Voices from Vietnam
The middle passage : white ships/black cargo
Voices of AIDS
The diary of a young girl : the definitive edition
Father Greg and the homeboys
The last shot: city streets, basketball dreams
When plague strikes : the Black Death, smallpox, AIDS
The American eye : eleven artists of the twentieth century
Her stories : African American folktales, fairy tales, and true tales
Moving violations
Been to yesterdays : poems of a life
The block : poems
In search of color everywhere: a collection of African-American poetry
Virginia's general: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War
Red-tail angels: the story of the Tuskegee airmen of World War II
The great fire
Caught in the crossfire: growing up in a war zone
Pierced by a ray of sun : poems about the times we feel alone
Hot zone
Hunting dinosaurs
Little girls in pretty boxes: the making and breaking of elite gymnasts and figure skaters
Ditchdigger's daughter
The tree is older than you are : a bilingual gathering of poems & stories from Mexico with paintings by Mexican artists

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1995

In the time of the butterflies
Tell them we remember : the story of the Holocaust
Am I blue? : coming out from the silence
Song of Be
Dakota dream
Heartbreak and roses: real-life stories of troubled love
Looking after Lily
The examination
Travelling on into the light and other stories
Pigs don't fly
Finder: a novel of the borderlands
Parable of the sower
Cool salsa : bilingual poems on growing up Latino in the United States
Driver's Ed
Oddly enough
Catherine, called Birdy
The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm
Flight of the Dragon Kyn
Kids at work : Lewis Hine and the crusade against child labor
Billy
Stranger at the wedding
No effect
Phoenix rising
It's nothing to a mountain
Say it loud! : the story of rap music
Wolf-woman
Deliver us from Evie
Owl in love
The beekeeper's apprentice, or on the segregation of the queen
Zoo book: the evolution of wildlife conservation centers
Tiger, tiger, burning bright : a novel
Spite fences
After a suicide: young people speak up
Beyond the burning time
Shadow catcher : the life and work of Edward S. Curtis
Escape from Egypt
Gypsy Davey
Iceman
Unconditional surrender : U.S. Grant and the Civil War
Letters from the inside
Makes me wanna holler : a young Black man in America
The Glory Field
Sarajevo: a portrait of the siege
Earthshine
The great apes: between two worlds
The magic and the healing
Celebrate America : in poetry and art
Winterdance : the fine madness of running the Iditarod
Something terrible happened
The grass dancer
Come in from the cold
Missing the piano
Boys from St. Petri
Too soon for Jeff
Those who love the game: Glenn "Doc" Rivers on life in the NBA
Hannah in between
Shakespeare and Macbeth: the story behind the play
Billy
Something permanent
Under the blood-red sun
The cage
Wish you were here
Coffee will make you black
Toughing it
Cezanne Pinto : a memoir
Hearing us out: voices from the gay and lesbian community
Shadow
The Ramsay scallop : a novel
When she hollers
My brother, my sister, and I
Mysterium
Focus : five women photographers : Julia Margaret Cameron, Margaret Bourke-White, Flor Garduño, Sandy Skoglund, Lorna Simpson
I hadn't meant to tell you this
I hadn't meant to tell you this

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1994

Singer to the sea god
The bus people
Days of grace : a memoir
Voices from the fields : children of migrant farmworkers tell their stories
Durable goods
Missing Angel Juan
Here's to you, Rachel Robinson
To the top of the world : adventures with Arctic wolves
Dawn land
Crazy lady!
Whatever happened to Janie?
Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes : a novel
Having our say : the Delany sisters' first 100 years
Heart of a champion
A bone from a dry sea
Kindertransport
Like water for chocolate : a novel in monthly installments, with recipes, romances, and home remedies
Soul looks back in wonder
Bull Run
Eleanor Roosevelt : a life of discovery
A lesson before dying
Shadow of the dragon
The champion
Charms for an easy life
Shadow man
Uncle vampire
The wind blows backward
Right by my side
Beardance
For the life of Laetitia
A short walk around the Pyramids and through the world of art
Stardust hotel
Looking for your nane: a collection of contemporary poems
Toning the sweep
Winter of fire
Girl, interrupted
The TV guidance counselor
Freedom's children : young civil rights activists tell their own stories
Champions: stories of ten remarkable athletes
The giver
The giver
The EMC masterpiece series access edition
The giver
25th anniversary edition
El dador
Spanish translation
Shadow boxer
Baby
A whole new ball game : the story of the all-American girls professional baseball league
Who is Eddie Leonard?
Out of control
Deerskin
Shelter : a novel
White lilacs
Shizuko's daughter
Malcolm X : by any means necessary : a biography
The magic circle
Harris and me : a summer remembered
Nightjohn
Freak the Mighty
Revolutions of the heart
The crocodile bird
Detour for Emmy
In my father's house
Lady of the forest: a novel of Sherwood
Who do you think you are? : stories of friends and enemies
Miriam's well
Oddballs
Thor
Haveli
Black ships before Troy: the story of the Illiad
The tiger orchard
Fair game
Timothy of the cay
Grab hands and run
Anne Frank, beyond the diary : a photographic remembrance
Walker of time
I never saw another butterfly : children's drawings and poems from Terezín Concentration Camp, 1942-1944
Peter
Montana 1948
Note: we do have the 2007 edition
Striking out
Lombardo's law
Make lemonade
American dragons : twenty-five Asian American voices

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1993

Steal away
What you don't know can kill you
Blue heron
Buried in ice
Ajeemah and his son
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys
Lily
What hearts
Two moons in August
Jumping the Nail
The place of lions
My father the nutcase
Flight #116 is down
Sleep of stone
Tunes for bears to dance to
Gone
Dope and trouble: portraits of delinquent youth
If rock and roll were a machine
AK
Dear nobody
Who killed my daughter? The true story of a mother's search for her daughter's murderer
Measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours
Binge
100 questions and answers about AIDS : a guide for young people
Becca's story
An Indian winter
Song of the buffalo boy
Jumper
Teenage fathers
Earthquake at dawn
Pelican brief
Dinotopia: a land apart from time
Music of summer
Fool's hill
One more river to cross: the stories of twelve Black Americans
Letters from Rifka
The Big Wander
Turtle moon
Right kinds of heroes: Coach Bob Shannon and the East St. Louis Flyers
Acquainted with the night
What you can do to avoid AIDS
One of the boys
A sudden wild magic
Someone else's baby
For you, Hank: the story of Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble
Crossing blood
Teens with AIDS speak out
The Harmony Arms
Primrose way
Bardic voices: the lark and the wren
Kiss the dust
Letters from a slave girl : the story of Harriet Jacobs
Not a swan
In your face: a cartoonist at work
Sojourner Truth : ain't I a woman?
Where the broken heart still beats : the story of Cynthia Ann Parker
Way past cool
Long road to Gettysburg
The righteous revenge of Artemis Bonner
Somewhere in the darkness
The beggars' ride
Rosa Parks : my story
The haymeadow
Family of strangers
Is kissing a girl who smokes like licking an ashtray?
The broken bridge
A little bit dead
Completely Mad: a history of the comic book and magazine
Time windows
Last Pendragon
A break with charity : a story about the Salem witch trials
Civil War! America becomes one nation
Missing May
Missing May
Blue skin of the sea : a novel in stories
The Stinky Cheese Man and other fairly stupid tales
Child of faerie, child of earth
Lost in Yonkers
Honor bound: a gay American fights for the right to serve his country
River rats
Crosses
The house that crack built
The weirdo
When the road ends
Invisible thread
Plague
Stormsearch
Yaxley's cat
Weeping willow
Bad boy
Crocodile burning
The leaving, and other stories
Lockie Leonard, human torpedo
Maizon at Blue Hill
Searching for dragons : the enchanted forest chronicles
Briar Rose
Plague of sorcerers
The pigman & me

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1992

I had a hammer
Last chance to see
Illegal: seeking the American dream
Gruel and unusual punishment
Nothing but the truth : a documentary novel
Do or die
Beating the odds: stories of unexpected survival
Predator!
Journey of the sparrows
Amazing Gracie
Black ice
Year of impossible goodbyes
Family : a novel
Prized possessions
We all fall down
North Pole legacy: black, white, and Eskimo
Jurassic Park
Athletic shorts : six short stories
Checking on the moon
Powerful days: the Civil Rights photography of Charles Moore
The borning room
Memories of my life in a Polish village, 1930-1949
Monkey island
The Wright brothers : how they invented the airplane
Muscle: confessions of an unlikely bodybuilder
Good omens: the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch
My friend's got this problem, Mr. Candler
Flying changes
Thunderwith
Ghost girl : the true story of a child in peril and the teacher who saved her
The trouble with lemons
Murder on the Iditarod Trail
Girl with the white flag: an inspiring tale of love and courage in war time
Downriver
Ask me something easy
Castle in the air
Animal dreams
There are no children here : the story of two boys growing up in the other America
What do I do now? Talking about teenage pregnancy
Summer of fire: Yellowstone, 1988
Black unicorn
The brave
Sorrow's kitchen: the life and folklore of Zora Neale Hurston
Journey
Pegasus in flight
Boy's life
Walking with the great apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas
Waiting for Anya
The boys' war : Confederate and Union soldiers talk about the Civil War
Now is your time! : the African-American struggle for freedom
The man from the other side
Lyddie
The cookcamp
The monument
My name is Sus5an Smith, the 5 is silent
American women : their lives in their words : a documentary history
Wolf by the ears
House Tibet
What daddy did
Maus II : a survivor's tale : and here my troubles began
There's a girl in my hammerlock : a novel
Children of promise : African-American literature and art for young people
Beauty
The rain catchers
Kingdom by the sea
Ryan White, my own story
Fast talk on a slow track
Red Cap
The Mozart season
Vampires : a collection of original stories

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1991

Kareem
Life doesn't frighten me at all
Distant fires
Baby of the family
Till the end of time
The true confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Whole Earth ecolog: the best of environmental tools and ideas
Ratha and thistle-chaser
I can hear the mourning dove
Risky times: how to be AIDS-smart and stay healthy
Voices of rape
Note: we do have the revised edition
Beyond the myth : the story of Joan of Arc
The shadow brothers
Borderlands
Kisses
Black in Salem: the uncommon life of J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Collidescope
The heroic life of Al Capsella
Tom loves Anna loves Tom
Starbridge
Circus dreams
White Peak Farm
Riding in cars with boys
Dream is alive: a flight of discovery aboard the space shuttle
Across the grain
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Small victories : the real world of a teacher, her students, and their high school
The other victims : first-person stories of non-Jews persecuted by the Nazis
Paper doll
Speaking for ourselves : autobiographical sketches by notable authors of books for young adults
Enter three witches
Dixie storms
Journey
Cousins
Mother earth father sky
Black dance in America : a history through its people
Quest for a maid
Rice without rain
Dawn rider
Children of the dragon: the story of Tiananmen Square
Sing for a gentle rain
The Place my words are looking for : what poets say about and through their work
Eye of the world
Breaking the chains: African American slave resistance
Foxes of firstdark
What's that pig outdoors? : a memoir of deafness
The silver kiss
Boy in the moon
Losing Joe's place
Prehistory of the Far Side: a tenth anniversary exhibit
Seeing Earth from space
Brother moose
Legacies: a Chinese mosaic
Mary Reilly
Ferris Beach
Columbus, and the world around him
The Mouse rap
Design for a livable planet
Chain of fire
Send no blessings
The things they carried : a work of fiction
Voices in the mirror: an autobiography
Woodsong
You take the high road
Pearl of the soul of the world
Skywater
The tiger in the well
A nation torn : the story of how the Civil War began
Couple of kooks and other stories about love
Soda jerk
Clover : a novel
A hand full of stars
Strange attractors
Libby on Wednesday
Baseball in April and other stories
Maniac Magee
The cuckoo's egg : tracking a spy through the maze of computer espionage
Trail of stones
The road to Memphis
Pickle and Price
On fortune's wheel
Who's to know? Information, the media, and public awareness
Saving Lenny
Queen of the summer stars
Dealing with dragons

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 1990

Memorial: a novel of the Vietnam War
American family farm
Quest for a king: searching for the real King Arthur
Manzanar
Rights of man, the reign of terror: the story of the French Revolution
Weetzie Bat
New kids in town : oral histories of immigrant teens
Original title: New kids on the block : oral histories of immigrant teens
No kidding
On the wing
Bathing ugly
Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet : Selections from the People Pieces
Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet : Selections from the People Pieces
E-book
Up country
V for Victor
When someone you know is gay
Celine
My Daniel
Road from Coorain
Children of the river
Chinese handcuffs
Silver pigs
On the Devil's court
Eva
In lane three, Alex Archer
Don't look behind you
Don't look behind you
Phoenix rising, or, How to survive your life
War at home
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places : a Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
Note: we do have the First Anchor books edition
Swan Lake
Bearstone
Making a difference: the story of an American family
Jack
Digging dinosaurs
Sweetgrass
Brickyard summer
Wrestling with honor
No more Saturday nights
How it feels to fight for your life
Fighting back: what some people are doing about AIDS
Loving Ben
I dream a world : portraits of Black women who changed America
Silver days
The way things work
I feel like the morning star
So much to tell you
Earth, air, fire, and water
The end of nature
Benjamin Franklin : the new American
Voices from the Civil War : a documentary history of the great American conflict
Queen of October
Newfound
Forty-third war
Photographs that changed the world
City, not long after
Fire in the heart
Island of ogres
My brother stealing second
And one for all
The abduction
Dinosaur
The voyage of the Frog
The winter room
How could you do it, Diane?
Buffalo Brenda
Fine time to leave me
Farm: a year in the life of an American farmer
Creature
Unlived affections
Heartbeats and other stories
Skeeter
Shabanu : daughter of the wind
The Joy Luck Club
Sniper
Why are they weeping? South Africans under Apartheid
Great man's secret
Long live the queen
Coachman rat
Dydeetown world
Gypsies
This boy's life : a memoir
A begonia for Miss Applebaum

This Handy Topic...

will help you locate the different YALSA Best Books that are in our collections. Just click on a name to go to the record!

Please note: if a title is not linked, it means that we currently do not have it in our collection. Please check the Kearney Public Library or consider ordering it from Interlibrary Loan

For YALSA Best Books from other decades, check out the links below!

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Curriculum Associate

Sharon Kofoed

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