DPL - Printz

The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young
adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active
member of the Young Adult Library Services Association. The award is sponsored by Booklist,
a publication of the American Library Association.

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2013	In Darkness Lake, Nick. New York : Bloomsbury, 2012. In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, fifteen-year-old Shorty, a poor gang member from the slums of Site Soleil, is trapped in the rubble of a ruined hospital, and as he grows weaker he has visions and memories of his life of violence, his lost twin sister, and of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who liberated Haiti from French rule in the 1804.

2012	Where things come back : a novel Whaley, John Corey. Seventeen-year-old Cullen's summer in Lily, Arkansas, is marked by his cousin's death by overdose, an alleged spotting of a woodpecker thought to be extinct, failed romances, and his younger brother's sudden disappearance.

2011	Ship breaker [a novel] Bacigalupi, Paolo. In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.

2010	Going bovine Bray, Libba. Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

2009	On the Jellicoe Road Marchetta, Melina, 1965- Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia.

2008	The white darkness : a novel McCaughrean, Geraldine. New York, NY : HarperTempest, 2007. Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone--a troubled fourteen year old--discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.

2007	American born Chinese Yang, Gene Luen. New York : First Second, 2006. Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.

2006	Looking for Alaska Green, John. New York : Dutton Children's Books, 2005. Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

2005	How I live now Rosoff, Meg. New York : Wendy Lamb Books, c2004. To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

2004	The first part last Johnson, Angela, 1961- New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2003. Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.

2003	Postcards from no man's land Chambers, Aidan. New York : Dutton Children's Books, 2002. Alternates between two stories--comtemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British soldiers's attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation.

2002	A step from heaven Na, An, 1972- Asheville, NC : Front Street, 2000. A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.

2001	Kit's wilderness Almond, David, 1951- New York : Delacorte Press, 2000. Thirteen-year-old Kit goes to live with his grandfather in the decaying coal mining town of Stoneygate, England, and finds both the old man and the town haunted by ghosts of the past.

2000	Monster Myers, Walter Dean, 1937- New York, N.Y. : HarperCollins Publishers, c1999. While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

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