Лучшая книга года, написанная для подростков, основываясь на её литературных достоинствах
Лауреат
Паоло Бачигалупи
3.8
Нефтяные танкеры, севшие на мель в Мексиканском заливе, уже не транспортные средства, а добыча. Разграблением их занимаются целые команды, которые высаживаются на борт с американского побережья. Молодой парень, по кличке Гвоздарь, специализируется по цветным металлам. Срезая проводку, вытаскивая многожильные кабели, разбирая корабельные механизмы, Гвоздарь мечтает лишь о том, чтобы выполнить дневную норму и увидеть следующее утро. Но однажды он находит прибитую к берегу ураганом роскошную яхту, на борту которой обнаруживает единственную оставшуюся в живых девушку. Она красива и богата. И в благодарность за свое спасение, может помочь Гвоздарю выбраться из нищеты. А может, все-таки лучше разобрать яхту и распродать ее по частям? Впервые перед Гвоздарем встает непростой выбор...
Janne Teller
4.1
"Nothing matters."
"From the moment you are born, you start to die."
"The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. You'll live to be a maximum of one hundred. Life isn't worth the bother!"
So says Pierre Anthon when he decides that there is no meaning to life, leaves the classroom, climbs a plum tree, and stays there.
His friends and classmates cannot get him to come down, not even by pelting him with rocks. So to prove to him that there is a meaning to life, they set out to build a heap of meaning in an abandoned sawmill.
But it soon becomes obvious that each person cannot give up what is most meaningful, so they begin to decide for one another what the others must give up. The pile is started with a lifetime's collection of Dungeons & Dragons books, a fishing rod, a pair of green sandals, a pet hamster — but then, as each demand becomes more extreme, things start taking a very morbid twist, and the kids become ever more desperate to get Pierre Anthon down. And what if, after all these sacrifices, the pile is not meaningful enough?
Marcus Sedgwick
4.0
Set in 1910, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle in the Scandinavian town of Giron, this intense survival story is propelled by a relentless sense of danger and bone-chilling cold. Einar, teenage Sig's father, has died after a fall through the ice. But the harsh environment pales in comparison with the ruthless stranger, Gunther Wolff, who demands from Sig and his sister the gold their father allegedly stole from him a decade earlier in the Alaska Gold Rush. Sedgwick (My Swordhand Is Singing) reveals the truth in riveting, gemlike scenes that juggle time periods, points of view, and the family's divided worldview, epitomized by Einar's Colt revolver. “Guns are evil. Evil, Einar,” says Sig's pacifist mother, while the more pragmatic Einar believes his Colt is “the most beautiful thing in the world.” In the end, the gun plays a pivotal role as Sig must shape his own view and act accordingly. Gracefully weaving in sources as diverse as the Old Testament story of Job and an 1896 ad for the revolver, Sedgwick lures his readers into deeper thinking while they savor this thrillingly told tale.
A. S. King
3.9
Vera Dietz is every teenager, yet she is uniquely herself. The abandoned daughter of a runaway mother, Vera lives with her accountant father who is himself a study in contradictions. An accountant who spouts Zen platitudes, he parents Vera with the firm conviction that steering her away from the pitfalls that tripped him up as a teenager is the only way to save her from herself. Yet, he also shoves her out of the nest and into the adult world of work early in her teen years. Vera rebels against the strict rules and constant warnings. Told not to drink, she becomes a binge drinker. Told not to befriend Charlie Kahn, she falls in love with him only to lose him to the more promiscuous and psychotic Jenny. In alternating voices and viewpoints, the story reveals Charlie and Vera's relationship and Vera and her father's relationship, Vera and her mother's antagonism, and the intermittent voice of Charlie, dead and begging for vindication for the incidents surrounding his death. The plot is complex and the characters are intricate, many-faceted and tragically, humanly flawed. In many ways, this is a psychological thriller as Vera's inner torments play out in dreams and hallucinations of Charlie. Her eventual understanding that her father is actually in her corner is a dawning of maturity, yet she teaches him, as well, that he cannot turn his back on the abuse and dysfunction that produced Charlie's emotional wounds. This is a book for mature teens as there are discussions of pornography and fetishism, but given the right reader, this is a page-turner to be savored and discussed. Reviewer: Lois Rubin Gross
Lucy Christopher
4.0
It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him.
This is my story.
A letter from nowhere.
Sixteen-year-old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back?
The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don't exist--almost.
Книга Почета (Printz Honor Books).