The Reading List.

NEED A GREAT BOOK FOR THE BEACH? CHECK THESE OUT.

Of course you have a list of books you have to read this summer, and then there's a list of books you should read, but what about a few you might just want to read?

The first Michael L. Printz prize for young adult literature sponsored by the American Library Association--it's meant to be the Newbery or Caldecott for teens--was awarded in January to Monster, a stunning courtroom novel by Walter Dean Myers about a 16-year-old accused of murder. The prolific author is back this season with 145th Street Short Stories (Delacorte Press). It's a set of 10 stories beginning with "Big Joe's Funeral" and ending with "Block Party--145th Street Style." Nothing is quite what it seems in these tales that brim with detail and deftly etched characterizations. For example, the reason Peaches Jones is going to mess up Big Joe's funeral is because he's not dead.

David Almond, a British writer whose first novel published in the U.S., Skellig, was the Printz honor book, is also back with Kit's Wilderness (Delacorte Press). Kit Watson, a newcomer in a depressed British mining town, follows a classmate in a dangerous game called Death, played in an abandoned mine. There are ghosts in the mine.

A promising newcomer is Lori Aurelia Williams, whose spirited first novel When Kambia Elaine Flew in From Neptune (Simon & Schuster) is told from the point of view of Shyla Dubois. In the Bottom neighborhood of Houston, where everybody keeps an eye on everybody else's business, Shyla's older sister Tia is messing around with dim-witted Doowitty, and the adults are all fit to be tied. Kambia Elaine is the strange girl who moves in next door.