Gateway Readers Award

The purpose of the Gateway Readers Award is to promote literature, literacy and reading in Missouri high schools, and to recognize authors and illustrators of books that are favorites of Missouri students in these grades. Each year, Missouri students in grades 9-12 vote for their favorite book from a list of nominated titles. The Gateway Readers Award is awarded to the author of this book by the Missouri Association of School Librarians.

Current Winners/Nominees | All Award Winners | All Nominees Lists

Current Winners/Nominees

2024 Winner

You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

After a fatal car accident that reveals Emory's brother Joey's opioid addiction, Emory struggles to help him on his road to recovery and make herself heard in a town that insists on not listening.

Gateway Award Nominees 2024-2025

A Year to the Day by Robin Benway

It's been a year--a year of missing Nina. A year of milestones--holidays, birthdays, everything without her. Leo feels like she should remember what happened that night. But all she knows is that she left the party and got into a car with Nina and Nina's boyfriend, East. East, who once promised Nina he'd watch out for her younger sister. East, who has been trying to keep that promise every day since. But East won't give Leo the one thing she wants--the one thing she needs. He won't tell her anything about the accident. He won't talk about that night at all. As the days tumble one into the next, Leo's story comes together while her world falls apart. The only constant is the one person who can help her bear the enormous weight of her love for Nina--and East might be carrying too heavy a load of his own.

After Dark With Roxie Clark by Brooke Lauren Davis

Eighteen-year-old Roxie agrees to help her sister Skylar uncover her boyfriend's killer, but they discover that everyone in Whistler, Indiana, is hiding something and some ghost stories are best left untold.

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

A family extending from Pakistan to California deals with generations of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness.

All That's Left in the World by Erik J Brown

Putting their trust in one another, two boys, Andrew and Jamie, search for civilization in a world ravaged by a deadly pathogen, but their secrets could cost them everything as they try to find the courage to fight for the future, together.

Do-Over by Lynn Painter

Hotel Magnifique by Emily J Taylor

Seventeen-year-old Jani and her little sister Zosa secure jobs at a glamorous magical hotel, but when Jani realizes that their staff contracts are unbreakable, she embarks on a mission to unravel the mystery of the magic at the heart of the hotel and free Zosa--and the other staff--from the cruelty of the ruthless maître d'hôtel.

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

In a country governed by isolation, fear, and a tyrannical dictator, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer, but he decides to use his position to try to outwit his handler, undermine the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country.

My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth

High school senior Bel Maier has an aptitude for engineering and teams up with robotics team captain, Mateo Luna, but after a rough start together the nights of after-school work lead to romance.

Nothing More to Tell by Karen M McManus

Brynn Gallagher uses her internship at a new true crime show to investigate the unsolved murder of her favorite teacher, uncovering secrets about her school, her teacher and her ex-best friend.

The Getaway by Lamar Giles

Jay discovers that mountain resort where he lives and works with his friends and family is also a doomsday oasis for the rich and powerful who expect top-notch customer service even as the world outside the resort's walls disintegrates.

The Q by Amy Tintera

When the president's son, Lennon, is kidnapped and pushed out of an airplane over the Q, a vast quarantine zone, Maisie gives him a seventy-two-hour vaccine, and together the two teenagers attempt to fight their way through the Q to survive.

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

Transgender demigod Teo is unexpectedly selected for the Sunbearer Trials, a fierce competition among demigod heroes where the winner sacrifices the loser to Sol, their blood fueling the Sun Stones that protect Reino del Sol.

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D Jackson

When Springville residents--at least the ones still alive--are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it. An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington. After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life. But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.

The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart

When sixteen-year-old Lily Larkin's older sister, Alice, begins struggling with her mental health, Lily attempts to keep everything together and perfect, despite her growing anxiety.

Those Summer Nights by Laura Silverman

Hannah shattered her ankle and her Olympic dreams in one bad soccer play. These days she'll do anything to keep the painful memories of her recent past at bay, including the string of bad decisions that landed her at boarding school for a year. With its mini golf course, bowling alley, and arcade-- not to mention coworker Patrick-- a job at the local entertainment multiplex Bonanza seems like the perfect way to stay distracted. Then her boss announces a staff competition that brings her past Olympic nightmares crashing back into her present. -- adapted from jacket.

All Award Winners

Gateway Award Winners

2023

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer (Jennifer Lynn) Barnes

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.

2022

Heroine by Mindy McGinnis

When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run. Behind the plate is the only place she's ever felt comfortable, and the painkillers she's been prescribed can help her get there. The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good. With a new circle of friends--fellow injured athletes, others with just time to kill--Mickey finds peaceful acceptance, and people with whom words come easily, even if it is just the pills loosening her tongue. But as the pressure to be Mickey Catalan heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, something that could send her spiraling out of control.

2021

The Unfortunates by Kim Liggett

After getting away with murder, Grant Tavish plans his own form of justice, but before he can act upon it a cave system collapse traps him and four other teenagers miles below the surface, where they soon discover that they aren't alone. ________ A Tom Doherty Associates book.

2020

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.

2019

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

In a world in which humanity has conquered death, Scythes are the only ones who are allowed to take a human life. Two unwilling teens are chosen to be Scythes and must learn the art of killing.

2018

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

Maddy has a serious autoimmune disease that prevents her from leaving the house. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.

2017

The Book of Ivy by Amy Engel

In an apocalyptic future where girls from the losing faction are forcibly married to boys of the winning faction, sixteen-year-old Ivy is tasked to kill her fiancé Bishop, although when she finally meets him, he is not the monster she has been led to believe.

2016

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

2015

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.

2014

Divergent by Veronica Roth

In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

2013

Rot & Ruin by Jonathon Mayberry

In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.

2012

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.

2011

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

In a not-too-distant future, the USA has collapsed and been replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally.

2010

13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher

When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

2009

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

2008

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

2007

Crank by Ellen Hopkins

Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter, but she meets a boy who introduces her to drugs and becomes a very different person, struggling to control her life and her mind.

2006

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Eragon, a young farm boy, finds a marvelous blue stone in a mystical mountain place. Before he can trade it for food to get his family through the hard winter, it hatches a beautiful sapphire-blue dragon, a race thought to be extinct. Eragon bonds with the dragon, and when his family is killed by the marauding Ra'zac, he discovers that he is the last of the Dragon Riders, fated to play a decisive part in the coming war between the human but hidden Varden, dwarves, elves, the diabolical Shades and their neanderthal Urgalls, all pitted against and allied with each other and the evil King Galbatorix.

2005

Lovely Bones, The by Alice Sebold

The spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder, her surprise at her new home in heaven, and her witness to her family's grief, efforts to find the killer, and attempts to come to terms with what has happened.

2004

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

Four best girlfriends spend the biggest summer of their lives enchanted by a magical pair of pants.

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