The ALA has awarded all of its many awards today and while some of these titles are certainly deserving, I can't help but think that it seems there are always so many titles that are overlooked and deserve much more exposure. So consider this Colleen's first annual "You Should Read This!" young adult awards. It's a purely subjective list based on young adult titles I read and reviewed that were published last year. My categories are my own, and they might completely change in the future, depending on what comes across my desk between now and next year.

Here goes:

Best Chick Flick in a Book - Hands down this has to be Love, Cajun Style by Diane Les Bequets. Lucy, Mary Jordan and Evie are a great set of girlfriends - the best set - and this wonderful look at their lives and loves in their small Louisiana town is a delight from beginning to end. I was particularly impressed by how Les Bequets includes the parents in the story and prevents them from being invisible, cardboard steretypes. I laughed and I very nearly cried. It's just a sweetheart of a book and a very much a feel good read.

Best Buddy Book - Oh how I wish more people knew about From Charlie's Point of View by Richard Scrimger! It's partly a mystery with some slight supernatural elements (very slight, but enough to make it more fun), but more than anything it is about Charlie, Bernadette and Lewis. It would be simplistic to call them a group of misfits - it seems everyone always wants to label anyone who is out of the "in" crowd as a misfit and that drives me crazy! - they are just friends and because of their strong friendship they manage to do something truly cool together. It's fun and exciting and smart and one of the best YA mysteries I've read in ages.

Best Social Commentary - Going, Going by Naomi Shihab Nye. Florrie wants to save her town and decides the best way to do that is to keep it as quirky and independent as possible. She ends up enlisting the aid of friends and family to boycott the local chain stores and bring more attention to what makes San Antonio a unique destination. You will read this and laugh but it will also make you think about just what the big boxification of America means to the places where we live. There are no big villains here, it's just something to make you think, and it seems we never do enough of that, no matter how young or old we are.

Best War Book - Hands down, Kipling's Choice by Geert Spillebeen (translated by Terese Edelstein) is one of the most powerful war books that I have ever read. (And I have read a lot of them.) WWI was the most significant conflict in modern world history and young people in the U.S. are taught woefully little about it. By focusing on the tragic story of John Kipling and his father Rudyard, Spillebeen manages to write a universal tale about why young men go off to fight, and why they fought this particular war. It's a heartbreaker and utterly brilliant. In a perfect world, every history class in America would be reading this book.

Best Sci Fi Novel - I had no idea what to expect when I picked up Ann Halam's Siberia. Set in a futuristic world that reads much like a 20th century Siberian gulag, this is the story of a girl who will fight against all odds to protect the important wildlife DNA strands that she has been entrusted with. It's a massive adventure story but also a great tale of what one person can do to change their world. The fact that it is very loosely based on the seed bank in Leningrad during WWII just makes it all that much more impressive. This book defies all expectations, it's just fabulous.

Best Coming of Age/Finding Yourself Tale - Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci is the story of a girl who does not fit in - in a major way. She is a rabid Sci Fi fan who tries to believe she is content being different, but really, is searching for her own place to fit in. The path that "Egg" takes to discover herself is so sweet and funny and unusual that I pretty much fell madly in love with the kid long before I finished he story. I think Castellucci has found a remarkable niche here with the coming of age novel, and I was equally impressed with her very different but also well written brand new book, The Queen of Cool. She's one to watch.

Best Literary Heavyweight - Walter Dean Myers should have won every award possible last year with Autobiography of My Dead Brother. This story of a young man struggling to survive and remain true to himself in a dangerous city neighborhood is so honest and intense that it took my breath away. Illustrated by Christopher Myers it is a flat out, no holds barred attempt at showing how friendships break apart, how young people lose their way, and how incredibly hard it can be to hold yourself separate from the chaos that surrounds you. I have precious little in common with the young men in Myers's book, but I cared so much about them by the time I was done reading this book. His book transformed me, and I wish everyone would read it.

Best Historical Novel - The Vanishing Point is a great novel about a period in Italian history that I think few young adults are aware of, the 16th century Italian Renaissance. Lavinia's father is a great painter and she shares his gifts, but as a young girl she seems to have no chance at making art a career. Over the course of the book she rebels against the constraints of her time, enlists the aid of one of her father's students and makes discoveries about both herself and her parents. The fact that Lavinia was a real person, who became a great painter, just makes this book all the more fascinating. But it is Louise Hawes's amazing gift to portray the Italy of 300 years ago that really impressed me. And the ending - the ending was amazing. I never saw it coming and it was so well done, so shocking, that it catapulted Hawes way up the list of my authors to watch.

There are so many other books I could write about, so many others that I reviewed last year for Bookslut or Eclectica and loved on every level. These are the ones I wish more people knew about though, the ones that I think could have a really significant impact on their readers. These are my award winners for 2005 and if I can get everyone to read just one, then I'll be one very happy book lover!