Gateway Award Nominees

1. Gateway Award Nominees 2010-11

2. Compound • Author: S. A. Bodeen • Eli, the 15-year-old son of a billionaire, has spent the last six years with his family in the massive underground shelter after a nuclear war has destroyed the world he knows—and killed his grandmother and his twin brother, who couldn't reach the compound in time. As their food begins to run out, Eli grows suspicious about his father's claims about the outside world and realizes that it is his father who may be his enemy. • Reading level: 4.1; AR points: 8.0

3. Shift • Author: Jennifer Bradbury • When best friends Chris and Win go on a cross country bicycle trek the summer after graduating and only one returns, the FBI wants to know what happened. • Reading level: 4.8; AR points: 9.0

4. Graceling • Author: Kristin Cashore • Feared as a killer since her childhood, Lady Katsa uses her unusual Grace (superhuman gift) in the service of her uncle, King Randa. She is beginning to rebel against his orders to kill or maim his more disloyal subjects when her path crosses that of Po. A young foreign prince with a mysterious Grace as well as wisdom beyond his years, Po convinces Katsa that she can stand up to the brutal king and put her gift to better uses. When Katsa joins Po on a quest, she throws herself headlong into a rescue mission and finds romance, self-knowledge, and justice along the way. • Reading level: 5.3, AR points: 18.0

5. The Hunger Games • Author: Suzanne Collins • In the future, the United States is gone, and life in District 12 is hard for Katniss and her family. Since her father died, she has fed her mother and little sister Prim by hunting on forbidden land. Each year the government makes two children from each of the twelve districts compete against one another in a live reality show where only one will survive. When Prim's name is called, Katniss volunteers to compete alongside the baker's boy Peeta. Katniss will have to use all her brains, wits, and instincts to determine who to trust and how to outwit the game's creators. • Reading level: 5.3, AR points: 15.0

6. Lock and Key • Author: Sarah Dessen • When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby winds up living with Cora, the sister she has not seen for ten years, and learns about Cora's new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her when she needs it, and that she too has something to offer others. • Reading level: 5.3, AR points: 17.0

7. The Musician’s Daughter • Author: Susanne Dunlap • In eighteenth-century Vienna, Austria, fifteen-year-old Theresa seeks a way to help her mother and brother financially while investigating the murder of her father, a renowned violinist in Haydn's orchestra at the court of Prince Esterhazy, after his body is found near a gypsy camp. • Reading level: 6.5; AR points 13.0

8. Paper Towns • Author: John Green • One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears. . • Reading level: 5.4, AR points: 13

9. Playing with Matches • Author: Brian Katcher • Desperate to improve his standing with the girls at Zummer High, Leon Sanders--a junior--seems to be making headway with his long-time crush Amy Green, but when he starts to get to know a social pariah named Melody Sanders, Leon begins to see beyond Melody's disfigurement. . • Reading level: 4.4; AR points: 9

10. The Juvie Three • Author: Gordon Korman • What are the odds a teenage gangbanger, a 15-year-old murderer, and a 14-year-old who crashed a stolen car can keep it together when the saintly social worker who has given them a second chance at redemption ends up comatose in the hospital? Terence, Arjay, and Gecko become unlikely co-conspirators at keeping Doug Healy’s absence hidden from teachers, their psychologist, and especially from their nasty case worker. Arjay and Gecko, determined not to do anything that will land them back in jail, become model students and strong-arm Terence into extremely reluctant compliance. It seems to be working until Doug awakens with amnesia, Terence annoys a gang leader, and a high-ranking cop tells Gecko to stop seeing the daughter of a wealthy businessman. • Reading level: 4.9; AR points: 8.0

11. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks • Author: E. Lockhart • Alabaster Preparatory Academy sophomore • Frankie Landau-Banks is cute, clever, and dating one of the most popular boys in school -- who also happens to be the co-leader of an all-male secret society on campus called the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. At first Frankie is content just to be Matthew Livingston's arm candy, but the more he keeps secrets from her -- seriously underestimating her intelligence -- the more restless she becomes. By impersonating Matthew's co-leader over e-mail, Frankie takes control of the Bassets, secretly engineering campus-wide pranks such as fastening bras on paintings of the school's founding fathers • Reading Level: 5.5; AR Points: 9.0

12. Wake • Author: Lisa McMann • Janie still remembers the first time it happened. She was eight when her life changed forever. Janie finds herself sucked into the dreams of those around her. No matter where she is or what she is doing, if someone near her is dreaming, then Janie is too. Now, at 17, sleep-deprived and over-stimulated, Janie doubles her load by working at a nursing home every minute that she isn’t in school. With the help of Cabel, a figure from her past, as well as that of a former resident from the nursing home, Janie finds that the curse may be a blessing after all. • Reading level: 3.4; AR points: 5.0

13. Three Little Words • Author: Ashley Rhodes-Courter • By the age of 20, the author's mother had given birth to three children, one of whom died right after birth. Immature and unable to control what was happening in her life, she gave up Ashley and her brother, who entered the foster care system. In nine years, Ashley would be in 14 different foster homes, and would be separated from her brother. Some of the homes were good, many were not, but Ashley wanted to believe her mother's promise of a home together. Foster children were displayed to prospective parents during adoption picnics, and that was how Ashley met her family. Resisting, and not trusting, when the Courter family decided to adopt her, Ashley tested them. At her adoption hearing, she finally muttered the "three little words" that made her part of the Courter family-"I guess so." • Reading level: 5.4; AR points 12.0

14. Stealing Heaven • Author: Elizabeth Scott • Eighteen-year-old Danielle—aka Sydney, Rebecca, or whatever alias her mother chooses—has been stealing since she can remember. She and her theft-savvy mother move from town to town, mining the successful men whom her mother attracts for information that allows them to find and rob the toniest homes. Dani has no school, no friends, and no home until she and her mother land in Heaven, a small, wealthy beachfront town where Dani realizes what it is like to have a best friend and also a boyfriend, who just happens to be a cop. • Reading level: 4.0; AR points: 8.0

15. Good Enough • Author:Paula Yoo • Patty's immigrant parents expect her to be a "P.K.D" (perfect Korean daughter), which means that between AP classes, violin, church and Ivy League applications, Patty gets little time-and less encouragement-to figure out what she wants for herself. When she develops a crush on a new boy and forms a friendship with him, her romantic feelings go unrequited but he does show her to think more broadly, encouraging her to take her violin teacher's advice and apply to Juilliard (her parents insist there is "no security in music"). • Reading level: 5.1; AR points: 7.0

16. Sweethearts • Author: Sara Zarr • Jennifer Harris, years after being the tormented outsider on the playground, has reinvented herself into Jenna Vaughn, a popular girl with what seems to be the perfect life, but when a childhood friend re-enters her life, she is forced to confront the most traumatic event of her past and question who she really is. • Reading level: 5.1; AR points: 7.0