As some (or most) of you may know, I am interning at Booklist in Chicago until the the end of May. In trying not to think about what’s going to happen when that internship is over, I’ve been back at the blogging, trying to up my content on other social media sites and create more posts on here that aren’t just book reviews. At Booklist currently, we are creating things that celebrate 50 years of young adult literature, as it has been 50 years since The Outsiders was published.
Booklist has created their own list of the 50 Best YA Books of All Time, including one on their Twitter everyday (you can follow them @BooklistYA). While I didn’t help create the list, I’ve been doing little tasks throughout the course of my internship in order to help with the publication of the list. In doing so, I couldn’t help but think that there were books that I would have included on the list that weren’t there–so, I’m creating my own list! It, perhaps, will be skewed more to my own tastes as a reader, but many of these are books that I could read again and again.
Here are, what I think, are 50 of the best young adult books to have been published, in no particular order. Because, let’s face it, it’s difficult to rank what books are your absolute favorite.
1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997)*
2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)
4. The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)*
5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
6. Looking for Alaska by John Green (2005)
7. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)
8. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (1967)
9. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (1995)
10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)*
11. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)*
12. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1974)
13. Feed by M.T. Anderson (2002)
14. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999)
15. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (2011)
16. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson) by Rick Riordan (2005)
17. Every Day by David Levithan (2012)
18. Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley (2011)
19. Going Bovine by Libba Bray (2009)
20. Blankets by Craig Thompson (2003)
21. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2006)
22. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner (2016)
23. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017)
24. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (2007)*
25. Deadline by Chris Crutcher (2007)
26. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)
27. Graceling by Kristin Cashore (2008)
28. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin (1968)
29. Forever by Judy Blume (1975)
30. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini (2006)
31. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer (2002)
32. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (2005)
33. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz (2012)
34. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (2014)
35. More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera (2016)
36. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010)
37. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (2016)
38. Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin (2016)
39. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (2012)
40. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
41. I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson (2014)
42. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (2015)
43. Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King (2011)
44. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)*
45. Postcards from No Man’s Land by Aidan Chambers (1999)
46. Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (2007)
47. Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler (2011)
48. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008)*
49. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (1987)
50. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (2000)
*These are not traditionally classified as YA, but are often read by young adults.
There’s a pretty decent mix of older and newer books in here, but there’s definitely been a surge of really good YA books published recently. We are in the second golden age of young adult literature, after all. What would you include in your top 50 YA books?