2023 YRCA Winners
City spies
Ponti, James, author
2020
Sara Martinez is a hacker. She recently broke into the New York City foster care system to expose her foster parents as cheats and lawbreakers. However, instead of being hailed as a hero, Sara finds herself facing years in juvenile detention and -- even worse -- banned from using computers. Enter Mother, a British spy who offers her a way out of her current problem, and the chance to make a home for herself within a top secret MI6 agency. Operating out of a base in Scotland, the City Spies are five kids from various parts of the world. When not attending the local boarding school, they're honing their unique skills, such as sleight of hand, breaking and entering, observation, and explosives. Jumping right into the action, Sara soon finds herself taking her computer savvy to Paris for an international youth summit, hacking into a rival school's computer to prevent them from winning a million euros, dangling thirty feet off the side of a building, and trying to stop a villain...all while navigating the complex dynamics of her new family. No one said saving the world was easy...
From the desk of Zoe Washington
Marks, Janae, author
2020
"Avid baker Zoe Washington receives a letter on her twelfth birthday from her biological father, who is in prison for a terrible crime"-- Provided by publisher.
The inheritance games
Barnes, Jennifer Lynn author
2020
When a Connecticut teenager inherits vast wealth and an eccentric estate from the richest man in Texas, she must also live with his surviving family and solve a series of puzzles to discover how she earned her inheritance.
Legendborn
Deonn, Tracy, author
2020
After her mother dies in an accident, Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC-Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape-- until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A young mage who calls himself a 'Merlin' attempts-- and fails-- to wipe Bree's memory of everything she saw. His failure unlocks Bree's own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now she'll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
The paper girl of Paris
Taylor, Jordyn, author
2020
"Now: Sixteen-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris ... When her grandmother passed away two months ago, she left Alice an apartment in France that no one knew existed. An apartment that has been locked for more than seventy years. Alice is determined to find out why the apartment was abandoned and why her grandmother never once mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II ... However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about. Then: Sixteen-year-old Adalyn doesn't recognize Paris anymore. Everywhere she looks, there are Nazis, and every day brings a new horror of life under the Occupation. When she meets Luc, the dashing and enigmatic leader of a resistance group, Adalyn feels she finally has a chance to fight back. But keeping up the appearance of being a much-admired socialite while working to undermine the Nazis is more complicated than she could have imagined."--Provided by publisher.
The silence of bones
Hur, June, author
2021
In Joseon Dynasty-era Korea, sixteen-year-old Seol, an indentured servant within the police bureau, becomes entangled in a politically-charged investigation into the murder of a noblewoman.
We are not free
Chee, Traci, author
2020
For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.
When stars are scattered
Jamieson, Victoria, author, illustrator
2020
Omar and his younger brother Hassan live in a refugee camp, and when an opportunity for Omar to get an education comes along, he must decide between going to school every day or caring for his nonverbal brother in this intimate and touching portrayal of family and daily life in a refugee camp.
The wild
Laukkanen, Owen, author
2020
Seventeen-year-old Dawn and a group of other teens must survive a "wilderness therapy" camp in Washington State as things quickly and drastically go wrong.