2013-2014
2013-14
Hoffman Estates
High School
Wintergirls
Neither therapy nor
threats nor her ex–best
friend's death can turn
Lia away from her
habits of cutting and
self-starvation. In
broken, symbolic and
gut-wrenching prose,
Lia narrates her
hopeless story of the
destructive behaviors
that control her every
action and thought.
By Laurie Anderson
Shadow and
Bone
Orphaned by the
Border Wars, Alina
Starkov is taken from
obscurity and her only
friend, Mal, to become
the protege of the
mysterious Darkling,
who trains her to join
the magical elite in the
belief that she is the
Sun Summoner, who
can destroy the
monsters of the Fold.
By Leigh Bardugo
Ashes
Alex, a resourceful
seventeen-year-old running
from her incurable brain
tumor, along with Tom, who
has left the war in
Afghanistan, and Ellie, an
angry eight-year-old, join
forces after an
electromagnetic pulse
sweeps through the sky and
kills most of the world's
population, turning some of
those who remain into
zombies and giving the
others superhuman senses.
By Ilsa J. Bick
Hate List
She doesn't have the
answers for why her
boyfriend chose a May
morning to kill six
classmates and wound
several others, but Valerie
Leftman is one of the only
people who can still
remember the good in Nick
Levil. As she builds her
post-Nick identity during
her senior year, Valerie
forms an unlikely friendship
with one of the shooting
victims, explores art
therapy and watches her
family structure dissolve.
By Jennifer Brown
Ready Player
One
Immersing himself in
a mid-twenty-firstcentury technological
virtual utopia to
escape an ugly real
world of famine,
poverty, and disease,
Wade Watts joins an
increasingly violent
effort to solve a series
of puzzles by the
virtual world's creator.
By Ernest Cline
Room
A five-year-old narrates
a story about his life
growing up in a single
room where his mother
aims to protect him from
the man who kidnapped
her when she was a
teenager and has held
her prisoner for seven
years.
By Emma Donoghue
The Fault in our Stars
Sixteen-year-old
Hazel, a stage IV
thyroid cancer
patient, has accepted
her terminal
diagnosis until a
chance meeting with
a boy at cancer
support group forces
her to reexamine her
perspective on love,
loss, and life.
By John Green
Stupid Fast
Just before his
sixteenth birthday,
Felton Reinstein has a
sudden growth spurt
that turns him from a
small, jumpy, picked-on
boy with the nickname
of "Squirrel Nut" to a
powerful athlete,
leading to new friends,
his first love, and the
courage to confront his
family's past and
current problems.
By Geoff Herbach
Five Flavors
of Dumb
Eighteen-year-old
Piper becomes the
manager for her
classmates' popular
rock band, called
Dumb, giving her the
chance to prove her
capabilities to her
parents and others, if
only she can get the
band members to get
along. Plus, Piper is
deaf!
By Antony John
Everybody sees the
Ants
Overburdened by his
parents' bickering and a
bully's attacks, fifteenyear-old Lucky
Linderman begins
dreaming of being with
his grandfather, who
went missing during the
Vietnam War, but during
a visit to Arizona, his
aunt and uncle and their
beautiful neighbor,
Ginny, help him find a
new perspective.
By A.S. King
Every Day
Every morning A
wakes in a different
person's body, in a
different person's life,
learning over the
years to never get too
attached, until he
wakes up in the body
of Justin and falls in
love with Justin's
girlfriend, Rhiannon.
By David Levithan
Legend
In a dark future, when
North America has
split into two warring
nations, fifteen-yearolds Day, a famous
criminal, and prodigy
June, the brilliant
soldier hired to
capture him, discover
that they have a
common enemy.
By Marie Lu
I Hunt Killers
Seventeen-year-old Jazz
learned all about being a
serial killer from his
notorious "Dear Old
Dad," but believes he has
a conscience that will
help fight his own urges
and right some of his
father's wrongs, so he
secretly helps the police
apprehend the town's
newest murderer, "The
Impressionist."
By Barry Lyga
Purple Heart
While recuperating in a
Baghdad hospital from a
traumatic brain injury
sustained during the
Iraq War, eighteen-yearold soldier Matt Duffy
struggles to recall what
happened to him and
how it relates to his tenyear-old friend, Ali.
By Patricia McCormick
Cinder
As plague ravages the
overcrowded Earth,
observed by a
ruthless lunar people,
Cinder, a gifted
mechanic and cyborg,
becomes involved
with handsome Prince
Kai and must uncover
secrets about her past
in order to protect the
world in this futuristic
take on the Cinderella
story.
By Marissa Meyer
The Night CircusChe
A fierce competition is
underway, a contest
between two young
magicians, Celia and Marco,
who have been trained
since childhood to compete
in "a game," in which each
must use their powers of
illusion to best the other.
Unbeknownst to them, this
game is a duel to the death,
and the circus is but the
stage for a remarkable
battle of imagination and
will.
By Erin Morgenstern
Across the
Universe
Teenaged Amy, a
cryogenically frozen
passenger on the
spaceship Godspeed,
wakes up to discover
that someone may
have tried to murder
her.
By Beth Revis
The Pregnancy
Project
Rodriguez shares her
experience growing
up in the shadow of
low expectations,
reveals how she was
able to fake her own
pregnancy, and tells
all that she learned
from the experience.
By Gaby Rodriguez
Divergent
In a future Chicago,
sixteen-year-old
Beatrice Prior must
choose among five
predetermined factions
to define her identity for
the rest of her life, a
decision made more
difficult when she
discovers that she is an
anamoly who does not fit
into any one group, and
that the society she lives
in is not perfect after all.
By Veronica Roth
Marcelo in the
Real World
Marcelo Sandoval, a
seventeen-year-old
boy on the highfunctioning end of the
autistic spectrum,
faces new challenges,
including romance
and injustice, when he
goes to work for his
father in the mailroom
of a corporate law
firm.
By Francisco X. Stork
Daughter of Smoke
and Bone
Seventeen-year-old
Karou, a lovely,
enigmatic art student
in a Prague boarding
school, carries a
sketchbook of
hideous, frightening
monsters--the
chimaerae who form
the only family she
has ever known.
By Laini Taylor
How to save
a Life
Told from their own
viewpoints,
seventeen-year-old
Jill, in grief over the
loss of her father, and
Mandy, nearly
nineteen, are thrown
together when Jill's
mother agrees to
adopt Mandy's
unborn child but
nothing turns out as
they had anticipated.
By Sara Zarr
The Abraham Lincoln Book List is:
•selected by Illinois students in grades 9-12.
•named for one of Illinois' most famous
residents who was an avid reader and noted
author.
•sponsored by the Illinois School Library
Media Association (ISLMA).
•designed to encourage high school students
to read for personal satisfaction and become
familiar with authors of young adult and adult
books. Click to access the HEHS online
catalog.
After you’ve read a book, submit an online
review. You will be entered into our
drawing to win a sweet treat, and we’ll
notify your English teacher who may give
you extra credit!