State Award Books - Read for a Lifetime 2026

"Musical lover Riley has big aspirations to become a director on Broadway ... but when Riley takes her mom's car without permission, she's grounded and stuck with the worst punishment: spending her after-school hours working at her dad's game shop. Riley can't waste her time working ... so she convinces Nathan--a nerdy teen employee--to cover her shifts and, in exchange, she'll flirt with him to make his gamer-girl crush jealous ... Soon, Riley starts...

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...

"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...

"The incredible story of an all-deaf high school football team's triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated, their inspirational brotherhood, a fascinating portrait of deafness in America, and the indefatigable head coach who spearheaded the team"-- Provided by publisher.

"Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She's at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her super-Catholic, nerdy-ass best friend, is pregnant--by the boyfriend she hasn't told her parents about, because he's Black, and her parents are racist. Things are hella complicated. Weighed by a depression...

A USA Today and 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 of a girl gathering types...

In the near future, citizens can enjoy watching the executions of society's most infamous convicted felons, streaming live on The Postman app from the prison island Alcatraz 2.0. Dee Guerrera wakes up in a haze, lying on the ground of a dimly lit warehouse, about to be the next victim of the app, found guilty of murdering her stepsister. But Dee refuses to roll over and die for a heinous crime she didn't commit. Her newly formed posse, the Death Row...

Years ago, the Fall kids' father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family's complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures. "The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California...

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,...

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...