2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults

YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) just posted the 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults Nomination list on the American Library Association website. The full list, which includes one of my favorite books of the past year - Chris Beam's transgender novel, I Am J - also has some intriguing titles, like Greg Taylor's The Girl Who Became A Beatle, and Gary Ghislain's eyebrow-raising How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend.

The nominations list, unlike others with YALSA, is simply that: a list of exceptional YA books. Throughout the year, YALSA awards several honors to young adult authors. The Morris Award, for example, annually honors a debut novel by a YA author. The most longstanding YALSA Award is the Edwards Award, which began in 1988 and is given every year to a young adult author for his or her longstanding effort in the genre. The most recent honor, the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, only began last year.

Read further about YALSA on their webpage.