Christian Book Award
For Youth
2010 -2011

2010 Children &Youth Winner

B4UD8- Before You Date YA 241.6 DIM Hayley and Michael DiMarco
Based on five years of feedback since the release of Dateable, Hungry Planet now delivers more of what their audience is asking for in B4UD8. By bridging the gap between diving head first into the dating pool or kissing dating goodbye, Hayley and Michael tackle the seven most important things every teen should know before their next date. Designed to be easily adopted for use in churches but still created in the same relevant style of all Hungry Planet books, B4UD8 will appeal not only to teens everywhere, but to their parents and youth leaders as well.
In it they will learn: • the purpose of dating • how to protect the temple • why dating is not marriage • and much more.  Whether their first date or their fiftieth, B4UD8 will help teens make biblical and smart decisions about love and dating
 

A Young Woman's Guide to Making Right Choices Elizabeth George YA 248.8 GEO
Today’s teens are bombarded with choices about attitudes, behaviors, friends, clothes, finances, and college. And with the rise of alcohol, drugs, sexual issues, and crime, they must make serious decisions daily. Bible teacher Elizabeth George takes teens through the step–by–step process of making decisions that are life–affirming, godly, and wise. Teens will discover checkpoints to use as guides for making decisions, and they will learn to take the long view when considering consequences. Young women will also realize the tremendous wisdom, guidance, and answers available in God’s Word.

Jesus Is Alive: Evidence for the Resurrection Children's Edition Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell YA 232 MCD
Kids want to see the evidence for themselves! In a kid-friendly Q&A about at the claims of the Gospel writers and 2,000 years of believing Christians, bestselling author Josh McDowell and his son Sean examine the compelling evidence and conclude that Jesus Christ conquered deat! In clear, accessible chapters that correspond to the adult and teen editions of the book, Josh and Sean invite children ages 7 to 10 to discover the proof of Christ's resurrection and what it means for them today.

Take Your Best Shot Austin Gutwein with Todd Hillard YA 261.8 GUT
Teen Austin Gutwein has taken his best shot several thousand times to help AIDS orphans in Africa and in the process has built a school and a medical clinic! Take Your Best Shot tells how one boy made an incredible difference in the lives of those without hope while challenging the reader to do the same. The interactive dialogue will leave space for the reader to respond. By the end of the book, the reader will know the testimony of Austin and other teens from around the world who are committed to a life of sharing Christ's love, and will have begun to search for God's voice in their own lives. The book will also equip and challenge readers with information on a variety of ministries and organizations around the world to help people, animals, and the environment.

Sweet Dreams Princess - Sheila Walsh
84 favorite stories from the International Children's Bible® are paired with devotions that are inspirational, positive and help little girls see God's love for them. Soft color pages will delight them as they lay down for night time devotions and prayers. Each story and devotion closes with a special prayer, promise, or praise to help connect her heart to family, friends, and most of all her heavenly Father!


Wild Cat Dandi Daley Mackall YA CHRISTIAN MAC
Meet 12-year-old Kat—short for Katharine. She thinks she has two weeks to do something worthy of being adopted by her wonderful foster family. But cancer, medicine, and the older kids at Starlight Animal Rescue make it difficult for Kat to really help out around the farm. On top of that, she's just started junior high and has to work on a project with the most popular—and demanding—girl in her class. When Kat accepts the role of "cat shrink" for her classmates' pets, could her success . . . or failure . . . be more than she can handle?
Starlight Animal Rescue: Where problem horses are trained and loved, where abandoned dogs become heroes, where stray cats become loyal companions. And where people with nowhere to fit in find a place to belong.

2010 Fiction Winner

Watch Over Me Christa Parrish CHRISTIAN PAR
Deputy Benjamin Patil is the one to find the infant girl--hours old, abandoned in a field. When the mother can't be located, Ben and his wife, Abbi, seem like the perfect couple to serve as foster parents. But the baby's arrival opens old wounds for Abbi and shines a harsh light on how much Ben has changed since a devastating tour in Iraq. Their marriage teeters on the brink and now they must choose to either reclaim what they once had or lose each other forever.

2010 Fiction Nominees

Blood Bayou LP YOU Karen Young
Seven years ago, tragedy ended the troubled marriage of Camille and Jack Vermillion. Now, as head of the Truth Project, her life safe and orderly, she focuses her lawyerly skills on freeing wrongly incarcerated individuals on death row. Jack paid a bitter price for his mistakes. No longer a high-powered corporate attorney, he's now pastor of a small church in Blood Bayou. Unsure of her own beliefs, Camille is highly skeptical of the conversion of this man she hasn't seen in seven years. Then tragedy strikes again. Jack's sister is murdered, apparently by a prisoner Camille has set free. To prove his innocence, Camille must return to Blood Bayou. But that means facing the hostility of the town -- and Jack.

Michal LP SMI Jill Eileen Smith
As the daughter of King Saul, Michal lives a life of privilege--but one that is haunted by her father's unpredictable moods and by competition from her beautiful older sister. When Michal falls for young David, the harpist who plays to calm her father, she has no idea what romance, adventures, and heartache await her. As readers enter the colorful and unpredictable worlds of King Saul and King David, they will be swept up in this exciting and romantic story. Against the backdrop of opulent palace life, raging war, and desert escapes, Jill Eileen Smith takes her readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride as Michal deals with love, loss, and personal transformation as one of the wives of David. A sweeping tale of passion and drama, readers will love this amazing story.

The Centurion's Wife Christian BUN & LP BUN Davis Bunn and Janette Oke
Janette Oke has dreamed for years of retelling a story in a biblical time frame from a female protagonist's perspective, and Davis Bunn is elated to be working with her again on this sweeping saga of the dramatic events surrounding the birth of Christianity...and the very personal story of Leah, a young Jewess of mixed heritage trapped in a vortex of competing political agendas and private trauma. Caught up in the maelstrom following the death of an obscure rabbi in the Roman backwater of first-century Palestine, Leah finds herself also engulfed in her own turmoil--facing the prospect of an arranged marriage to a Roman soldier, Alban, who seems to care for nothing but his own ambitions. Head of the garrison near Galilee, he has been assigned by Palestine's governor to ferret out the truth behind rumors of a political execution gone awry. Leah's mistress, the governor's wife, secretly commissions Leah also to discover what really has become of this man whose death--and missing body--is causing such furor. This epic drama is threaded with the tale of an unlikely romance and framed with dangers and betrayals from unexpected sources. At its core, The Centurion's Wife unfolds the testing of loyalties--between two young people whose inner searchings they cannot express, between their irreconcilable heritages, and ultimately between their humanity and the Divine they yearn to encounter.
 

Veiled Freedom Christian WIN Jeanette Windle
Naïve and idealistic, relief worker Amy Mallory arrives in Kabul ready to change the world. She soon discovers that as a woman in Afghanistan, the challenges she faces are monumental. As the new security chief to the Minister of the Interior, former Special Forces veteran Steve Wilson is disillusioned to find that the country he fought to set free has fallen into its old habits of greed and corruption. Afghani native Jamil returns to his homeland seeking a job while his painful past continues to haunt him. All three search for truth . . . and for freedom . . . but at what cost?

Healing Waters Christian RUE Stephen Arterburn and Nancy Rue
When Lucia Coffey looks at her reflection, she sees fat and failure. When she looks at her sister Sonia, she sees svelte and success. When she looks at God, she sees that divine love can't possibly be doled out equally. All her life, Lucia has coped by throwing herself into taking care of those who seem more worthy of God's goods, and feeding the dreams she has buried alive. But when tragedy strikes Lucia's family, she meets Sullivan Crisp--a decidedly offbeat psychologist who is trying to cope with his own shattered past. They form an alliance to try to hold her family together and, in the process, both tentatively dip their toes into the waters of healing. Step by faltering step they wade in, forging an unlikely community and digging deep for the courage to face a lurking danger that could pull them under . . . or remind them what it's like to dance on the waves.

June Bug Christian FAB Chris Fabry
June Bug believed everything her daddy told her. That is, until she walked into Wal-Mart and saw her face on a list of missing children. The discovery begins a quest for the truth about her father, the mother he rarely speaks about, and ultimately herself. A modern interpretation of Les Miserables, the story follows a dilapidated RV rambling cross-country with June Bug and her father, a man running from a haunted past. Forces beyond their control draw them back to Dogwood, West Virginia, down a winding path that will change their lives forever.