Iowa State Reading Lists
2021 - 2022 Iowa Children's Choice Award Master List Selection
Blended
Eleven-year-old Isabella’s blended family is more divided than ever in this thoughtful story about divorce and racial identity from the award-winni...
Look Both Ways
A Tale Told in Ten Blocks
A National Book Award Finalist Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book UK Carnegie Medal winner An NPR Favorite Book of 2019 A New York Times Best Chi...
Team Players
Cassie must learn that you can’t “fix” someone else after a girl with Aspergers joins her softball team in the fourth and final book of the Home Te...
Alone
Perfect for fans of Hatchet and the I Survived series, this harrowing middle grade debut novel-in-verse from a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet tells ...
2022 - 2023 Iowa Children's Choice Award Master List Selection
Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation
“Fast-paced, smart, and action-packed...a real page-burner.” —Chris Grabenstein, #1 New York Times bestelling author of the Mr. Lemoncello’s Librar...
City Spies
A New York Times bestseller! A GMA3 Summer Reading Squad Selection! “Ingeniously plotted, and a grin-inducing delight.” —People “Will keep young re...
Alone
Perfect for fans of Hatchet and the I Survived series, this harrowing middle grade debut novel-in-verse from a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet tells ...
City Spies
A New York Times bestseller! A GMA3 Summer Reading Squad Selection! “Ingeniously plotted, and a grin-inducing delight.” —People “Will keep young re...
Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation
“Fast-paced, smart, and action-packed...a real page-burner.” —Chris Grabenstein, #1 New York Times bestelling author of the Mr. Lemoncello’s Librar...
2020 - 2021 Iowa High School Book Award Nominee
Dry
When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harro...
2022 - 2023 Iowa High School Book Award Nominee
The Cost of Knowing
Four starred reviews! Dear Martin meets They Both Die at the End in this gripping, evocative novel about a Black teen who has the power to see into...
A Heart in a Body in the World
“This is one for the ages.” —Gayle Forman, author of the #1 bestseller If I Stay “A book everyone should read right now.” —The New York Times Book ...
Roll with It
A Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Book of 2019 “A big-hearted story that’s as sweet as it is awesome.” —R.J. Palacio, author of Wonder In the trad...
All This Time
From the team behind #1 New York Times bestseller Five Feet Apart comes a gripping new romance that asks: Can you find true love after losing every...
2020 - 2021 Iowa Teen Book Award Nominee
Five Feet Apart
Now a major motion picture starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson! Goodreads Choice Winner, Best Young Adult Fiction of 2019 A YALSA 2020 Q...
2022 - 2023 Iowa Teen Book Award
All This Time
From the team behind #1 New York Times bestseller Five Feet Apart comes a gripping new romance that asks: Can you find true love after losing every...
2022 - 2023 Iowa Teen Book Award Nominee
Long Way Down
The Graphic Novel
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) Jason Reynolds’s Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, and Coretta Scott King Honor–winning, #1 New York Times bestse...
2023 - 2024 Iowa Teen Book Award Nominee
Ain't Burned All the Bright
A Caldecott Honor winner! Prepare yourself for something unlike anything: A smash-up of art and text for teens that viscerally captures what it is ...
The List of Unspeakable Fears
The War That Saved My Life meets Coraline in this “deliciously creepy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) middle grade historical novel following ...
2022 - 2023 Iowa Goldfinch Award Nominee
Nobody Hugs a Cactus
Celebrated artist and lead character designer of Brave, Ratatouille, and Despicable Me, Carter Goodrich, shows that sometimes, even the prickliest ...