Too Many Books, Too Little Time!

We’re approaching our voting date (February 9th), and we still have a ton of possible winners and nominees to consider. Our nominees so far are as follows:

Carve the Mark – Veronica Roth

Dear Martin – Nic Stone

Frogkisser! – Garth Nix

*Grit – Gillian French

*The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas

Night Witches – Kathryn Lasky

One of Us Is Lying – Karen McManus

Radio Silence – Alice Oseman

Shadow Run – AdriAnne Strickland

Soldier Boy – Keely Hutton

Tash Hearts Tolstoy – Katie Ormsbee

Thornhill – Pam Smy

*Vincent and Theo – Deborah Heiligman

Who Killed Christopher Goodman? – Allan Wolf

You Bring the Distant Near – Mitali Perkins

*starred items were nominated by more than one reader

Leading the pack is The Hate U Give (no surprises there), with 8 nominations–one from every reader who finished it. Across the board it has been called relevant, timely, honest, authentic, and is populated by a cast of very real characters whose stories need telling. Several books we’ve read have tried to capture the spirit of the #BlackLivesMatter movement (Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, American Street by Ibi Zoboi, and Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson, to name a few). Dear Martin looks like a close second among the members who have read it so far, but nothing has taken us by storm the way Thomas’ debut has.

On top of the 94-book longlist (yikes!) that are working through, we are keeping an eye out for those late-in-the-year show-stealers: this month we added the nonfiction tome Because I Was a Girl: True Stories for Girls of All Ages edited by Melissa De La Cruz; The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy; A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge; and What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold. Just hope we can get through the list!