State Award Books - Read for a Lifetime 2026

Even though the world is filled with portals to hell and bloodthirsty demons pop out of them on the reg, Jasper spends his days and nights working as a check-out clerk at the Here For You discount mart. Sure, there's even a hell portal in aisle nine, which means he could be maimed, dismembered, or even eaten whole during every shift, but at least at the mart he can be near his crush, Kyle Kuan. That she doesn't seem to even notice that he exists seems...

"One spring afternoon after school, Amber arrives home on her bike. It's just another perfectly normal day. But when Amber's mom sees her, she screams. Because Amber died seven years ago, hit by a car while on the very same bicycle she's inexplicably riding now. This mysterious return doesn't impact only Amber. Her sister, Melissa, now seven years older, must be a new kind of sibling to Amber. Amber's now-estranged parents are battling over her. And...

Michael, to whom Liz Buxbaum gave her heart long ago, has returned but to get his attention and, perhaps, a prom date she must scheme with her nemesis Wes, her next-door neighbor. Liz Buxbaum's crush Michael never really saw her before he moved away. Now he is back in town, and Liz will do whatever it takes to get on his radar, and maybe snag him as a prom date. Attractive next-door neighbor Wes Bennet might seem like a prime candidate for romantic...

In the summer of 1995, almost-fifteen-year-old Almudena is sent to live with her estranged Spanish-speaking father, and together they renovate a brownstone and build a relationship while Almudena navigates the Latin American side of her heritage for the first time.

Set in the 1930s to today, four generations of Filipino American boys grapple with identity, masculinity, and father-son relationships. Watsonville, 1930. Francisco Maghabol barely ekes out a living in the fields of California. As he spends what little money he earns at dance halls and faces increasing violence from white men in town, Francisco wonders if he should've never left the Philippines. Stockton, 1965. Between school days full of prejudice...

Told in alternating voices, three teens, whose fates intertwine to stop the murder of innocent children, journey across two warring nations to ensure a better future for their people.

"When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren's missing sister, Mara thinks she'll finally make some friends on the Blackfeet reservation. Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered. Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them-Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli-have a complicated...

"A lone astronaut. An impossible mission. An ally he never imagined. Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission--and if he fails, humanity and Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The groundbreaking Korean phenomenon that Entertainment Weekly called “The Hunger Games meets Squid Game”—now in English for the first time!
A COSMOPOLITAN BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE YEAR • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“An immersive and utterly addictive dark dystopian thriller . . . with the eerie, desperate, and...

Winner of the 2024 Michael L. Printz Award
A National Bestseller
From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King and an all-star team of contributors including Anna-Marie McLemore and Jason Reynolds, an anthology of stories about remarkable people and their strange and surprising collections.
From David Levithan’s story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people’s collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale...