2025 Tween Book Recommended List
The Astronaut's Guide to Leaving the Planet by Terry Virts, 2023
In this exciting book, a former NASA astronaut inspires the next generation of space travelers with answers to all kids' questions on how people become astronauts, how they prepare for space travel, and what it's like to live and work in space.
Daughters of the Lamp by Nedda Lewers, 2024
When Sahara’s father surprises her with a trip to his Egyptian hometown for a family wedding, she’s apprehensive. Though she’s never set foot in the country or met her relatives, she’s swept up in warm embraces and new friendships, but things take a turn for the bizarre with the appearance of her uncle’s malevolent fiancé and a mysterious glowing necklace.
A Game of Noctis by Deva Fagan, 2024
Pia Paro questions the system she once believed in and joins the Seafoxes, a ragtag team of players seeking to win the deadly Noctis games, to save her grandfather.
Heroes by Alan Gratz, 2024
December 6, 1941: Best friends Frank and Stanley have it good. With their dads stationed at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, the boys get to soak up the sunshine while writing and drawing their own comic books. World War II might be raging overseas, but so far America has stayed out of the fight. There's nothing to fear, right?
December 7th, 1941: Everything implodes.
Frank and Stanley are touring a battleship when Japanese planes zoom overhead, dropping bomb after bomb. As explosions roar and sailors scream, Frank and Stanley realize the unthinkable is happening: Japan is attacking America! The war has come to them.
The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall by Ali Standish, 2023
When young Arthur Conan Doyle is offered a spot at Baskerville Hall, a secret school for extraordinarily gifted children, he is elated at being chosen--and being given a chance to turn his family's fortunes around. There, Arthur makes quick friends with Irene Eagle, a girl who boldly strides into action, and Jimmie Moriarty, a boy whose brilliance rivals Arthur's own. Together, they discover that their new school is a peculiar place, home to leaning towers and unexplained explosions, prowling wolves and extinct birds.
The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt, 2023
Seventh-grader Hercules Beal has to figure out how to fulfill his teacher's assignment of performing the Twelve Labors of Hercules in real life, and discovers important things about friendship, community, and himself along the way.
The Mona Lisa Vanishes: a Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity by Nick Day, 2023
A narrative nonfiction about how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world--and how the painting by Leonardo da Vinci should never have existed at all.
Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas, 2023
All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her the gift, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she's never heard of . . . to save her father from imprisonment for a crime she refuses to believe he committed.
Slugfest by Gordon Korman
Forced to take Physical Education Equivalency, aka "Slugfest," in summer school so he can maintain his star spot on the JV football team, Yash recruits his fellow PE rejects to train with him and pass this course, an endeavor that turns into a summer he'll never forget.
The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko, 2024
When eleven-year-old Hank's mother does not come home after a week, he and his toddler sister, Boo, seek out the stranger listed as their emergency contact, even though it means social workers, a new school, and having to answer questions about his mom that he has been trying to keep secret.