2016 Abraham

Lincoln Award
Winners
Great Books for 8th Graders
Title

Summary

Between Shades of
Gray by Ruta
Sepetys

Available in Chute library & Axis 360 App

Historical Fiction

Butter by Erin Jade

Lange
Realistic Fiction

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother,

and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian
home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia,
where her father is sentenced to death in a
prison camp while she fights for her life,
vowing to honor her family and the
thousands like hers.

Available in Chute library & Axis 360 App

Unable to control his binge eating, a

morbidly obese teenager nicknamed Butter
decides to make a live webcast of his last
meal as he attempts to eat himself to
death.

Cruel Beauty

Available in the Axis 360 App

Fantasy

Betrothed to the demon who rules her

country and trained all her life to kill him,
seventeen-year-old Nyx Triskelion must now
fulfill her destiny and move to the castle to
be his wife.

Aristotle and Dante

Discover the Secrets
of the Universe

Available in the Chute Library

Realistic Fiction

Darkest Minds by
Alexander Bracken
Fantasy

Ill Give You the Sun

by Nelson
Realistic Fiction

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner

with a brother in prison, but when he meets
Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask
questions about himself, his parents, and his
family that he has never asked before.

Available in the Axis 360 App

Sixteen-year-old Ruby breaks out of a

government-run 'rehabilitation camp' for
teens who acquired dangerous powers after
surviving a virus that wiped out most
American children.

Available in the Chute library

A story of first love, family, loss, and

betrayal told from different points in time,
and in separate voices, by artists Jude and
her twin brother Noah

Impossible Knife of
Memory by Anderson
Realistic Fiction

Positive: surviving my
bullies, finding hope,
and living to change
the world
By Paige Rawl

Available in the Chute Library and Axis 360 App

Hayley Kincaid and her father move back to

their hometown to try a 'normal' life, but
the horrors he saw in the war threaten to
destroy their lives

Available in Axis 360 and the Chute library

A teenager's memoir of the experiences of

bullying, being HIV positive and surviving
the experiences to become a force for
positive change in this world

Memoir

Rot and Ruin by

Jonathan Maberry
Horror

Steelheart by
Brandon Sanderson
Science
Fiction/Dystopian

Available in Axis 360 App

In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic

America where Benny Imura lives, every
teenager must find a job by the time they
turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half.
Benny doesn't want to apprentice as a
zombie hunter with his boring older brother
Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a
tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but
what he gets is a vocation that will teach
him what it means to be human.
Available in Axis 360 App

Steelheart depicts a post-apocalyptic world in

which the appearance of a comet has given
random people superhuman powers in
apparent defiance of known physical laws,
turning them into "Epics". These powers have
impelled most of them to prey upon or
enslave the rest of humanity, causing the
collapse of traditional governments. One
young man orphaned by a High Epic joins an
elite underground resistance movement.

This Song Will Save

Your Life by Sales

Available in the axis 360 App

Realistic Fiction

Nearly a year after a failed suicide attempt,

sixteen-year-old Elise discovers that she
has the passion, and the talent, to be a disc
jockey.

We Were Liars by E.
Lockhart

Available in the Chute library and the Axis 360

App

Realistic Fiction

Spending the summers on her family's

private island off the coast of Massachusetts
with her cousins and a special boy named
Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to
remember what happened during her
fifteenth summer.