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The Pacific Northwest Library Association's Young Reader's Choice Award is the oldest children's choice award in the U.S. and Canada. The award was established in 1940 by a Seattle bookseller, the late Harry Hartman, who believed every student should have an opportunity to select a book that gives her or him pleasure.
Nominations are taken only from the children, teachers, parents and librarians of the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, and Alberta.
Nominated titles were published three years previously, printed in the U.S. or Canada and are already favorites with the readers. Only 4th to 12th graders in the Pacific Northwest are eligible to vote. Read at least two books in your grade category and vote for your favorite in March 2004.
Nominees for the 2004 award are:
Grades 4-6
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Dial-A-Ghost |
A family of nice ghosts protects a British orphan from the diabolical plans of his evil guardians. |
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Everything on a Waffle |
Eleven-year-old Primrose, living in a small fishing village in British Columbia, recounts her experiences and all that she learns about human nature and the unpredicability of life in the months after her parents are lost at sea. |
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Love That Dog |
A young student, who comes to love poetry through a personal understanding of what different famous poems mean to him, surprises himself by writing his own inspired poem. |
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Parsifal's Page |
In medieval England, eleven-year-old Piers' dream comes true when he becomes page to Parsifal, a peasant whose quest for knighthood reveals important secrets about both of their families.. |
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Rowan of Rin |
Because only he can read the magical map, young, weak, and timid Rowan joins six other villagers to climb a mountain and try to restore their water supply, as fears of a dragon and other horrors threaten to drive them back. |
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The School Story |
After twelve-year-old Natalie writes a wonderful novel, her friend Zoe helps her devise a scheme to get it accepted at the publishing house where Natalie's mother works as an editor. |
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Skeleton Man |
After her parents disappear and she is turned over to the care of a strange "great uncle," Molly must rely on her dreams about an old Mohawk story for her safety and maybe even for her life. |
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Walk Across the Sea |
In late nineteenth-century California, when Chinese immigrants are being driven out or even killed for fear they will take jobs from whites, fifteen-year-old Eliza Jane McCully defies the townspeople and her lighthouse-keeper father to help a Chinese boy who has been kind to her. |
Grades 7-9
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Artemis Fowl |
When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll. |
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Fair Weather |
In 1893, thirteen-year-old Rosie and members of her family travel from their Illinois farm to Chicago to visit Aunt Euterpe and attend the World's Columbian Exposition which, along with an encounter with Buffalo Bill and Lillian Russell, turns out to be a life-changing experience for everyone. |
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Flipped |
In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years. |
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The Other Side of Truth |
Smuggled out of Nigera after their mother's murder, Sade and her younger brother are abandoned in London when their uncle fails to meet them at the airport and they are fearful of their new surroundings and of what may have happened to their journalist father back in Nigeria. |
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A Single Shard |
Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself. |
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Touching Spirit Bear |
After his anger erupts into violence, Cole, in order to avoid going to prison, agrees to participate in a sentencing alternative based on the Native American Circle Justice, and he is sent to a remote Alaskan island where an encounter with a huge Spirit Bear changes his life. |
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Witness |
A series of poems expresses the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town. |
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Zach's Lie |
When Jack Osborne is befriended by his school's custodian and a Basque girl, he begins to adjust to his family's sudden move to Elko, Nevada, after entering the Witness Security Program, but the drug cartel against which his father will testify is determined to track them down. |
Grades 10-12
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The Boy in the Burning House |
Trying to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance from their rural Canadian community, fourteen-year-old Jim gets help from the disturbed Ruth Rose, who suspects her stepfather, a local pastor. |
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The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants |
During summer break, longtime friends Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget each embark on adventures that they share with each other through a pair of jeans that they have decided will be worn by all and so will absorb all of their stories. |
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Slap Your Sides |
Life in their Pennsylvania hometown changes for Jubal Shoemaker and his family when his older brother witnesses to his Quaker beliefs by becoming a conscientious objector during World War II. |
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True Believer |
Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to. Sequel to: Make Lemonade. |
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Whale Talk |
Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school's less popular students. |
