Welcome to another new year! It’s been almost two weeks since 2026 started, but we’re still writing 2025 out of habit. Oops! We’ll get it right by June… we hope.
With the new year underway, we’re hard at work on our resolutions for the teen blog. We even have one of them already completed– our new logo! That makes us have a grand total of one out of our three new year’s resolutions finished… not bad for only one month in.
But that’s not all we want to talk about. This year we’re hosting an all-new ranking to determine which YA books are the best of the best and which ones can stay with the rest– and we want YOU to be the ones to decide!
This year we’re hosting the first ever Teen Election, so teens can pick their favorite YA books from the TADL collection. Curious? The rules are simple: Anyone under 20 is invited to nominate their favorite YA books by February 21st. Once we have our nominations, teens can elect their favorites from each category, then vote on the book that’s the best of the best!
Grab a nomination form next time you’re in the library, or fill out an online form here to make sure your favorites make it in!
Books from all different formats are eligible, including print novels, graphic novels/manga, ebooks, audiobooks, and novellas! We’ll accept nominations from eight YA genres, listed here:
- Detective Novels and Mystery
- Fantasy
- Sci-Fi and Dystopian
- Historical Fiction
- Action and Adventure
- Romance
- Thriller and Suspense/Horror
- Contemporary Fiction
If your favorite book is from a crossover genre like Urban Fantasy or Historical Romance, don’t worry– those count too! Just put them in the genre you think fits best and we’ll handle the rest.
We’ll have special book displays up throughout all of 2026 so you can see which of your favorites make the cut. Interested? We are too! We can’t wait to see which book is voted as the winner of our first ever TADL Teen Election!
Before we wrap up, we’re adding a little more fun to our day by guessing the top three trends that will dominate the teen world in 2026. If you want to play too, email your guesses to teens@tadl.org! Here are our top predictions for 2026: First, we’re predicting that crossover fiction will be all the rage! Romantasy (crossing romance and fantasy) was one of our most popular genres in 2025, but we don’t think it’ll stop there. We expect to see crossovers take over as the new normal this year! Next, we think K-Pop will be one of the most popular topics of 2026– not just in music, but in books too! With K-Pop Demon Hunters as a pop culture sensation, we know K-Pop and Korean culture will be in the spotlight for months to come. Our last prediction is that Suzanne Collins will release a new Hunger Games novel with a career tribute as the main character! Those are our top predictions for 2026.
Right or wrong, we can’t wait to see what this year will bring!