Adult books have long been popular reading for young adults. In this book Michael Cart has identified the top 200 fiction and nonfiction books that appeal to young adult readers. As a columnist and reviewer for Booklist and widely published in the field of young adult librarianship, Cart is ideally positioned to guide others in the development of collections for young adults. Cart broadens the definition of “young adult” to include young people through the age of 24. In order for a book to qualify for inclusion in this list Cart required that the protagonist or major secondary character in the book be a young adult, and that the book addressed issues or situations of interest to young adults.
In order to assist librarians with book selection Cart applied codes for a number of categories: adventure and exploration, Alex Award winners, biography and memoir, general fiction, graphic novel, general nonfiction, history and historical fiction, horror, humor, literature of inclusion, mystery and suspense, poetry, romance, science and nature, speculative fiction, sports, and technology. The book includes slightly more fiction entries than nonfiction; all of the books have been published since 1990.
Cart's many years' experience in writing book reviews has served him well with this effort. The reviews are well written and thoughtful. Cart explains why each book holds interest for young adults and often includes recommendations for other books by the same author or on the same topic in the entry for a recommended book. In this way Cart manages to recommend far more books than the 200 that have formal entries, a welcome result.
Overall, this book is an excellent resource for librarians who would like to assess the strength of their young adult collections. It must have been very difficult for Cart to narrow his recommended list to 200 titles, and, while it would be possible to quibble about a favorite book that might have been left off the list, it would be hard to argue with the strength of the titles that Cart has included. The book includes an index as well as two supplemental lists: “Not to be Missed: Books Notable for Their Overall Excellence”, and “Something Entirely Different: Books Notable for Their Originality”. This book will be of great interest to young adult librarians, collection development librarians or to anyone interested in keeping up with what is considered good current fiction and nonfiction.
