Alex Awards
The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.
2011 Winners:
The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by Pierson, D. C.
Forging an instant friendship based on a shared love for drawing and their bottom-rung social status, high school teens Darren and Eric ambitiously create a graphic novel series that is shaped by Eric’s increasingly hallucinatory sleeplessness.
Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray
The author offers an emotional account of her amazing journey from a 15-year-old living on the streets and eating garbage to her acceptance into Harvard, a feat that prompted a Lifetime movie and a successful motivational-speaking career.
Girl in Translation by Kwok, Jean
Emigrating with her mother from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, Kimberly Chang begins a secret double life as an exceptional schoolgirl during the day and sweatshop worker at night, an existence also marked by a first crush and the pressure to save her family from poverty.
The House of Tomorrow by Bognanni, Peter
Homeschooled teenager Sebastian Prendergast is forced by his grandmother’s stroke to venture out of his geodesic dome habitat and befriends a chain-smoking teen who introduces him to pop culture through the punk band they form together.
The Lock Artist by Hamilton, Steve
After surviving an act of violence as a child, Michael stops talking and grows up with the ability to open any lock or safe, a talent he sells to any buyer in the crime world, until a botched heist forces him to go home to face the secret that has kept him so quiet.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Bender, Aimee
Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone’s secret realities.
The Radleys by Haig, Matt
Struggling with overwork and parenting angst, English village doctor Peter Radley endeavors to hide his family’s vampire nature until their daughter’s oddly satisfying act of violence reveals the truth, an event that is complicated by the arrival of a practicing vampire family member.
The Reapers Are the Angels: A Novel by Bell, Alden
In a fallen America infested with zombies, a young girl named Temple is on the run, haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, and she must decide where she can find the salvation she seeks–in the insulated remnants of society or on the bleak, brutal frontier.
Room: A Novel by Donohue, Emma
A five-year-old narrates a story about his life growing up in a single room where his mother aims to protect him from the man who has held her prisoner for seven years since she was a teenager.
The Vanishing of Katherina Linden: A Novel by Grant, Helen
Reviled in her German village home where her only friends are a fellow outcast and an elderly storyteller, eleven-year-old Pia investigates the disappearances of three local girls whom she believes are tied to unsolved missing persons cases from decades earlier.
