Social Issues Books in the Redwood Library (Aug. 2007)
Story Collections
The color of absence: 12 stories about loss and hope. A collection of stories dealing with
different kinds of loss experienced by young people.
From one experience to another: award-winning authors share real-life experiences through
fiction. My brother's keeper / by Jay Bennett -- The truth about shrks / by Joan Bauer -- A
game of war / by Herb Karl -- Hamish Mactavish is eating a bus / by Gordon Korman -Sunrise over Manaus / by Walter Dean Myers -- No matter what / by Joan Lowery Nixon -The most important night of Melanie's life / by Richard Peck -- Young blue eyes / by Susan
Beth Pfeffer -- A blue moon in a white sky / by Nancy Springer -- Dozens of roses : a story
for voices / by Virginia Euwer Wolff -- Klesmer / by Suzanne Fisher Staples -- "White" real
estate / by Sharon Dennis Wyeth -- The wedding cake in the middle of the road / by Judith
Gorog -- Blue diamond / by Neal Shusterman -- Bikerbiks don't cry / by Avi -- About the
authors. A collection of fifteen short stories in which writers including Avi, Jay Bennett,
Gordon Korman, Joan Lowery Nixon, and Suzanne Fisher Staples draw upon their own
childhood experiences.
Places I never meant to be: original stories by censored writers. Introduction /Judy Blume -Meeting the mugger / Norma Fox Mazer -- Spear/ Julius Lester -- Going sentimental /
Rachel Vail -- Baseball camp / David Klass -The red dragonfly / Katherine Paterson -July Saturday / Jacqueline Woodson -- Love and centipedes / Paul Zindel -- Lie, no lie /
Chris Lynch -- You come, too, a-ron / Harry Mazer -- Ashes / Susan Beth Pfeffer -- The
beast is in the labyrinth / Walter Dean Myers -- Something which is non-existent / Norma
Klein. A collection of short stories accompanied by short essays on censorship by twelve
authors whose works have been challenged in the past.
Time capsule: short stories about teenagers throughout the twentieth century. Ten stories by such
notable authors as Richard Peck, Chris Crutcher, and Chris Lynch, each of which presents
the life of a teenager in a different decade of the twentieth century, accompanied by a brief
description of the historical and cultural highlights of that decade.
Novels
Adoff, Jaime. Names will never hurt me. Several high school students relate their feelings about
school, themselves, and events as they unfold on the fateful one-year anniversary of the
killing of a fellow student.
Agee, James, 1909-1955. A death in the family. The enchanted childhood summer of 1915
suddenly becomes a baffling experience for Rufus Follet when his father dies.
Alcock, Vivien. The trial of Anna Cotman. New to town, Anna is happy to find a friend, even if
it is the bossy and quarrelsome Lindy, and is pleased to be allowed to join the secret society
run by Lindy's older brother until she commits a "crime" that the society won't forgive.
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-.Reservation blues. Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in 1931, and
was murdered seven years later. He reappears in 1992 on the Spokane Indian Reservation
and meets Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who starts Coyote Springs, an all-Indian Catholic rockand-roll band.
Allison, Dorothy. Bastard out of Carolina. Bone confronts poverty, the troubled marriage of her
mother and stepfather, and the stigma of being considered "white trash" as she comes of age
in South Carolina.
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Almagor, Gila. Under the domim tree. Chronicles the joys and troubles experienced by a group of
teenagers, mostly Holocaust survivors, living at an Israeli youth settlement in 1953.
Alvarez, Julia. How the García girls lost their accents. Interrelated stories describe the
experiences of the four Garcia sisters before and after their family's exile from the
Dominican Republic. The novel is set in New York in the 1960s.
Alvarez, Julia. Finding miracles. Fifteen-year-old Milly Kaufman is an average American
teenager until Pablo, a new student at her school, inspires her to search for her birth family
in his native country.
Anderson, Jodi Lynn. Peaches : a novel. Three teenaged girls from very different backgrounds,
thrown together to pick peaches in a Georgia orchard, spend a summer in pursuit of the
right boy, the truest of friends, and the perfect peach.
Anderson, Jodi Lynn. The secrets of peaches. Three very different friends, Murphy, Leeda, and
Birdie, struggle to cope with the joys and sorrows of love, family, and destiny as their
friendship is tested beyond its limits.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating
effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Catalyst. Eighteen-year-old Kate, who sometimes chafes at being a
preacher's daughter, finds herself losing control in her senior year as she faces difficult
neighbors, the possibility that she may not be accepted by the college of her choice, and an
unexpected death.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Prom. Eighteen-year-old Ash wants nothing to do with senior prom, but
when disaster strikes and her desperate friend, Nat, needs her help to get it back on track,
Ash's involvement transforms her life.
Anderson, M. T. Burger Wuss. Hoping to lose his loser image, Anthony plans revenge on a bully
which results in a war between two competing fast food restaurants, Burger Queen and
O'Dermott's.
Angelou, Maya. I know why the caged bird sings. The author tells of her painful childhood and
adolescence, of her growth out of a childhood fantasy that she was an enchanted white girl,
and of her self-acceptance. This book contains mature situations and adult language.
Abusive human rights violations are portrayed.
Anonymous. Almost lost: the true story of an anonymous teenager's life on the streets. The story
of a young man's recovery from depression after leaving home, becoming a member of a
gang, and finally being overwhelmed with his seemingly no-way-out situation.
---. Go ask Alice. The purportedly anonymous diary of a girl destroyed by drugs--still relevant
after all these years.
---. It happened to Nancy. This is Nancy's own story, taken from her diary. It reveals her personal
feelings--from the wonderful romantic fantasies of first love to the nightmare of AIDS.
---. Treacherous love: the diary of an anonymous teenager. Fourteen-year-old Jennie's life's
loneliness is temporarily assuaged by her growing relationship with one of her teachers
which turns out badly.
Armstrong, William. Sounder. Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for
stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding with the
help of the devoted dog Sounder.
Arnow, Harriette. The dollmaker. A novel showing a strong human spirit tragically defeated by
modern society.
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Arrick, Fran. Tunnel vision. After 15-year-old Anthony hangs himself, his family, friends,
girlfriend, and a teacher must deal with their feelings of guilt and bewilderment.
Arrick, Fran. Chernowitz! A boy who suffers anti-Semitic abuse at the hands of a classmate
during his ninth and tenth grade years plots revenge against his tormentor.
Atkins, Catherine. When Jeff comes home. Sixteen-year-old Jeff, returning home after having
been kidnapped and held prisoner for three years, must face his family, friends, and school
and the widespread assumption that he engaged in sexual activity with his kidnapper.
Atwood, Margaret. The handmaid's tale. In Gilead, a Christian fundamentalist dystopia, fertile
lower-class women serve as birth-mothers for the upper class.
Atwood, Russell. East of A. Detective Payton Sherwood is drawn into a dusk-to-dawn nightmare
when he hits the streets of New York City's East Village in search of a sixteen-year-old
runaway who stripped him of his Rolex watch after he tried to save her from a bunch of
bullies.
Auel, Jean M. The clan of the cave bear. An orphaned Cro-Magnon child, adopted into a clan of
Neanderthal hunter-gatherers, grows into womanhood and into gradual awareness that her
survival is linked to that of humankind.
Auseon, Andrew. Funny little monkey. Arty, an abnormally short fourteen-year-old boy, enlists
the help of a group of students, known at school as the "pathetic losers," to take revenge
against his abusive, tall fraternal twin brother.
Averett, Edward. The rhyming season. A senior basketball-player shoulders the hopes of a dying
mill town and her bereaved family when she and an eccentric English teacher-coach try to
lead their team to state basketball history.
Avi. Nothing but the truth. In ever-widening circles of cause and effect, the story of a ninthgrader who is suspended for humming "The Star-Spangled Banner" when told to remain
silent unfolds from multiple perspectives. The story, told through letters, memos, diaries,
and news releases, explores the subtle and shifting nature of the "truth." Radical Change.
---. Wolf rider: a tale of terror. After receiving an apparent crank call from a man claiming to
have committed murder, fifteen-year-old Andy finds his close relationship with his father
crumbling as he struggles to make everyone believe him.
Baldwin, James. If Beale Street could talk. A powerful love story of survival in spite of prejudice
and injustice.
Bambara, Toni Cade. Gorilla, my love. Presents fifteen stories with a wide range of characters and
scenes shifting between uptown New York and rural North Carolina.
Banks, Russell. Rule of the bone. “Rule of the Bone is Huckleberry Finn transposed to Upstate
New York in the ‘90s, the tale of a white boy fleeing his depressed, small-minded
hometown. He travels to Jamaica, where he finds emotional sustenance in the company of a
ganja-smoking Rastafarian.” People weekly.
Barker, Pat. The man who wasn’t there. Twelve-year-old Colin knows very little about his
father, except that he served in the war, so the young boy begins watching every war film he
can find to learn more about the man his father might have been.
Bauer, Joan. Rules of the road. Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a
chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to
force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the
strength to face her alcoholic father.
---. Backwater. While compiling a genealogy of her family of successful attorneys, sixteen-yearold history buff Ivy Breedlove treks into the mountain wilderness to interview a reclusive
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aunt with whom she identifies and who in turn helps her to truly know herself and her
family.
---. Hope was here. When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from
Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways
diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's
corrupt mayor.
---. Best foot forward. Between school and Al-Anon meetings, Jenna helps Mrs. Gladstone cope
with escalating problems that result from the merger of Gladstone Shoes with Shoe
Warehouse Corporation, while managing a new employee with a shoplifting record.
Beale, Fleur. I am not Esther. After her mother unexpectedly leaves her with her uncle's family,
members of a fanatical Christian cult, Kirby tries to learn what has become of her mother
and struggles to cope with the repressiveness of her new surroundings and to maintain her
own identity.
Beard, Philip. Dear Zoe. Fifteen-year-old Tess DeNunzio attempts to work through her guilt and
grief over the death of her three-year-old half-sister Zoe by writing letters to the child who
was struck and killed by a car on September 11, 2001, while Tess was supposed to be
watching her.
Beatty, Paul. White boy shuffle. Young poet Gunnar Kaufman becomes the reluctant spokesman
of the African-American people when he publishes 1996. Young poet Gunnar Kaufman
becomes the reluctant 1996. Young poet Gunnar Kaufman becomes the reluctant
spokesman of the African-American people when he publishes his first book
"Watermelanin, " and his status is elevated to messiah when he proposes mass suicide as the
answer to the plight of all African-Americans.
Beckman, Gunnel. Admission to the feast. Faced with the knowledge that she is dying of
leukemia, a nineteen-year-old Swedish girl reviews the important people and events in her
life.
Bennett, Cherie. Anne Frank and me. After suffering a concussion while on a class trip to a
Holocaust exhibit, Nicole finds herself living the life of a Jewish teenager in Paris during
the Nazi occupation.
---. Life in the fat lane. Sixteen-year-old Lara, winner of beauty pageants and Homecoming
Queen, is distressed and bewildered when she starts gaining weight and becomes
overweight.
Bennett, James W. Plunking Reggie Jackson. High school baseball star Coley Burke tries to deal
with an ankle injury, back spasms, a pregnant girlfriend, academic failure, pressure from his
father, and the legacy of his dead older brother.
---. Blue Star rapture. While attending a high-profile basketball camp, T.J. begins to re-think both
his motivations and his actions in guiding his learning-disabled but athletically-gifted friend
through the college recruitment process.
---. The squared circle. Sonny, a university freshman and star basketball player, finds that the
pressures of college life, NCAA competition, and an unsettling relationship with his
feminist cousin bring up painful memories that he must face before he can decide what is
important in his life.
Berg, Elizabeth. Joy school. Katie, still mourning the death of her much-loved mother, is further
upset when she must leave her friends to move with her father to Missouri, but then she
meets Jimmy, a handsome, decent, married man, and learns about the joys and pain of first
love.
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---. What we keep. Flying home to visit her mother after thirty-five years out of touch, Ginny
Young recalls the summer of 1958 when she and her sisters were girls and the arrival of a
mysterious new neighbor sparked dramatic events.
Blacker, Terence. Boy2girl. After the death of his mother, thirteen-year-old Sam comes to live
with his cousin; and as a prank, he dresses up as a girl for school.
Blackman, Malorie. Naughts and Crosses. In a world where the pale-skinned Naughts are
discriminated against by the politically and socially powerful dark-skinned Crosses,
teenagers Callum--a Naught--and Sephy--a Cross--test whether their love is strong enough
to survive their society's racism.
Block, Francesca Lia. Echo. Jealous of her perfect mother and ignored by her artist father, Echo
seeks attention and healing from a variety of people living in beautiful Los Angeles.
---. The Hanged Man. Having stopped eating after the death of her father, seventeen-year-old
Laurel feels herself losing control of her life in the hot, magical world of Los Angeles.
Bloor, Edward. Tangerine. Twelve-year-old Paul, who lives in the shadow of his football hero
brother Erik, fights for the right to play soccer despite his near blindness and slowly begins
to remember the incident that damaged his eyesight.
Blume, Judy. Tiger eyes. Resettled in the "Bomb City" with her mother and brother, Davey
Wexler recovers from the shock of her father's death during a holdup of his 7-Eleven store
in Atlantic City.
---. Deenie. Deenie's scoliosis ends her mother's modeling dreams for her and both of them must
now adjust to the situation.
---. Smart women. Margo and B.B., two divorcees, are friends, and each has a daughter, Sara and
Michelle. The story concerns the reactions of these four women when Andrew, B.B.'s exhusband, hits town.
---. Summer sisters. Victoria Leonard and Caitlin Somers, two girls from very different
backgrounds, form a friendship that blooms over the summers spent in Caitlin's privileged
world, until heartbreak and betrayal tear them apart.
Bodett, Tom. Norman Tuttle on the Last Frontier : a novel in stories. Episodes in the life of
Alaskan teenager, Norman Tuttle, as he grows from ages thirteen to fifteen, falls in love for
the first time, and deepens his relationship with his father.
Bohjalian, Christopher A. The buffalo soldier : a novel. Terry and Laura Sheldon lose their 9year-old twins in a flash flood. After a year of putting their lives back together, the couple,
who are unable to have more children, decide to adopt a 10-year-old African American boy.
---. Water witches. In Vermont, dowser Patience Avery is having a busy summer as wells dry up,
and conservationists have to fight developers' plans to expand the local ski area and deplete
the water table to dangerously low levels.
Bone, Ian. Fat boy saves world Sixteen-year-old Susan Bennett returns home from boarding
school to discover her older brother, Neat, who hasn't spoken in eight years, wants to save
the world.
---. Sleep rough tonight. Teased and bullied by his high-school classmates, Alex Pimentino tries
to prove his worth by following the commands of a former student just released from
prison, but finds that his real strength comes from doing the right thing.
Bonham, Frank. The nitty gritty. Torn between a desire to stay in school and his father's insistence
that it is a waste of time, a black boy decides to quit school and go into business with the
uncle he worships. When the venture fails and his uncle deserts him, the boy faces reality
with a new maturity.
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Boock, Paula. Dare truth or promise. Louie Angelo, a Woodhaugh High prefect who plans to be a
lawyer, falls in love with a girl who lives in a pub and just wants to get through her exams
so she can become a chef.
Book, Rick. Necking with Louise. Depicts key events in the life of Eric Anderson, a
Saskatchewan farm boy, in 1964 and 1965, the year he turns sixteen.
Booth, Teena. Falling from fire. Fourteen-year-old Teri is trying to find out where she fits in,
both at home and at school, and when her house burns down in a fire, she thinks she may
get a fresh start.
Borland, Hal. When the legends die. After being betrayed by his own people and by white men, a
Ute Indian boy tries to regain his pride in himself and his heritage.
Bowler, Tim. Midget. Subject to strange fits, physically abnormal, and psychologically disturbed
from the constant torment and abuse of his older brother, fifteen-year-old Midget finds
himself in control of his life for the first time when he gets his own sailboat and discovers
untapped mental powers.
---. River boy Knowing that he is dying, Jess's grandfather insists on returning to the river he had
known as a boy to finish a special painting and fulfill a life-long dream.
Boyle, T. Coraghessan. After the plague: stories. Termination dust -- She wasn't soft -- Killing
babies -- Captured by the Indians -- Achates McNeill -- Mexico -- The love of my life -Rust -- Peep hall -- Going down -- Friendly skies -- The black and white sisters -- Death of
the cool -- My widow -- The underground gardens -- After the plague. A collection of
sixteen stories, many of which have appeared in "The New Yorker" magazine, in which
American author T.C. Boyle explores a range of contemporary social issues including air
rage, abortion doctors, and first love and its consequences.
Brashares, Ann. The sisterhood of the traveling pants. Four best girlfriends spend the biggest
summer of their lives enchanted by a magical pair of pants.
---. Girls in pants : the third summer of the sisterhood. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
graduates from high school and spends their last summer before college learning about life
and themselves.
Bridgers, Sue Ellen. Home before dark. Returning with her migrant family to her father's
childhood home, a fourteen-year-old struggles with her new stationary life.
Brooks, Bruce. Midnight hour encores. A sixteen-year-old cellist and musical prodigy travels
cross-country with her father, a product of the 1960s, to meet her mother, who abandoned
her as a baby.
---. Vanishing. Eleven-year-old Alice is unwilling to return to live with her alcoholic mother and
her stern stepfather, so she refuses to eat to the point of slowly starving herself, in order to
remain in the hospital.
---. All that remains Three novellas explore the effects of death on young lives. In one story,
cousins conspire to cremate their beloved aunt (who has just died of AIDS) in a potter’s kiln
to circumvent laws that would put her in a pauper’s grave. The most conventional story
follows a slick, hip teen who takes his decidedly uncool cousin under his wing to keep a
promise made to a dying uncle. The final story is a gem: a lone girl, laden with backpack,
insists on joining a trio of young male golfers and blows them away with her talent. The
contents of her backpack, however, are even more surprising than her sudden presence.
---. The moves make the man : a novel. A black boy and an emotionally troubled white boy in
North Carolina form a precarious friendship.
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---. Lucas. On an island off the coast of England, fifteen-year-old Caitlin McCann makes the
painful journey from adolescence to adulthood through her experiences with a mysterious
boy, who presence has an unsettling effect on the island's inhabitants.
Brooks, Kevin. Candy: Joe, an English boy from the right side of the tracks, is poised to get
everything he has ever wanted, but he risks it all when he falls for Candy, and is drawn into
her seedy, dangerous world.
---. Kissing the rain Fifteen-year-old Moo Nelson, shy, overweight, and bullied by his classmates,
finds his life spinning out of control after he witnesses a car chase and a fight that results in
a murder.
Brooks, Martha. Bone dance. When her father wills her a cabin on land in rural Manitoba,
Alexandra meets a young man who shares her Indian heritage and her experience of being
haunted by spirits.
Brouwer, Sigmund. Tyrone's story. Eighteen-year-old Tyrone Larson ponders the events of his
life that led to his part in the death of a high school friend from a drug overdose.
Brown, Rita Mae. Rubyfruit jungle. A novel about a dirt-poor southern girl who grew up gay.
---. Sudden death. Explores the relationship of two women. One is a tennis champion on the
international women's tennis circuit and the other is a professor of Greek religion.
Burgess, Melvin. Smack. After running away from their troubled homes, two English teenagers
move in with a group of squatters in the port city of Bristol and try to find ways to support
their growing addiction to heroin.
---. Doing it. Three teenage friends, Dino, Jonathon, and Ben, confront the confusions, fears, and
joys of adolescent male sexuality.
Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy tree. Young Will Tweedy lives in a small Georgia town called Cold
Sassy in the early 1900s. He is hard working (when pushed) because he has chores to do at
home and work to do at his Grandpa Blakeslee's store. That still leaves him time to plan
practical jokes with his pals and to overhear family dramas. The biggest drama begins when
Grandpa, only three weeks after the death of his wife whom he had dearly loved, marries
Miss Love Simpson-young enough to be his daughter. Miss Love has to face not only the
town gossip, but also rejection from Will's Mother and Grandpa's other daughter. The story
has humor, excitement, and realistic family confrontations
Cabot, Meg. The princess diaries Fourteen-year-old Mia, who is trying to lead a normal life as a
teenage girl in NewYork City, is shocked to learn that her father is the Prince of Genovia, a
small European principality, and that she is a princess and the heir to the throne.
Cadnum, Michael. Redhanded Since he cannot depend on his father, Stephen feels as though his
only chance to make it to the big boxing tournament is to go along with the dangerous plan
of a local tough guy to whom he has been introduced by a thrill-seeking friend.
---. Rundown. As a game, sixteen-year-old Jennifer pretends that she has been attacked by a serial
rapist, but then she finds herself getting more attention than she wanted, from the police and
her parents.
Campbell, Bebe Moore. Your blues ain't like mine A Chicago born young black man pays the
ultimate price for speaking a few words in French to a white women while visiting relatives
in Mississippi in the 1950s.
Canales, Viola. The tequila worm. Sofia finds that her experiences as a scholarship student at an
Episcopal boarding school in Austin only strengthen her ties to her family in the barrio
community of McAllen, Texas.
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Cappo, Nan Willard. Cheating lessons. When her team is announced as finalists in the state
Classics Bowl contest, Bernadette suspects that cheating may have been involved.
Cardillo, Joe. Pulse Seventeen-year-old Jason and his girlfriend Kris spearhead a movement to
save a wilderness area from being replaced by a mall.
Carrere, Emmanuel. Class trip. Translation of a French novel about Nicholas, a young boy whose
seemingly unnatural fears about going on a ski trip with his class turn out to have some
basis in reality.
Carroll, Jenny. Shadowland. Sixteen-year-old Susannah helps wayward spirits move on to the
next world, and faces evil specters, with the help of a guiding priest and a handsome hunk.
Cart, Michael. My father's scar. Through a series of flashbacks, eighteen-year-old Andy reveals a
growing awareness of his homosexuality and of the homophobia that requires him to hide
his knowledge.
Chambers, Aidan. Dance on my grave : a life and a death in four parts ... Hal's summer affair with
Barry Goldman ends tragically when Hal discovers he is much more committed to the
relationship than his friend.
---. Postcards from no man's land. Alternates between two stories--contemporarily, seventeenyear-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and
historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British soldier's attempts to
liberate Holland from its German occupation.
Cheshire, Simon. Kissing Vanessa. Fifteen-year-old Kevin has plans to do better in school, but
when the next term begins he is smitten by his new classmate, Vanessa, and he focuses all
of his energy on getting close to her.
Childress, Alice. A hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich. The life of a thirteen-year-old Harlem
youth on his way to becoming a confirmed heroin addict is seen from his viewpoint and
from that of several people around him.
Childress, Mark. Crazy in Alabama When Aunt Lucille calls Peter Joseph, he remembers the
summer of '65 when Alabama was rife with racial tension.
Choi, Sook Nyul. The year of impossible goodbyes. A young Korean girl survives the oppressive
Japanese and Russian occupation of North Korea during the 1940s, to later escape to
freedom in South Korea.
Cisneros, Sandra. The house on Mango Street A young girl living in a Hispanic neighborhood in
Chicago ponders the advantages and disadvantages of her environment and evaluates her
relationships with family and friends.
---. Caramelo, o, Puro cuento. Celaya "Lala" Reyes, viajando de Chicago a Ciudad de México
cada verano, dibuja juntas historias de su familia mexicana-americano de mantonfabricantes, su papa y abuela.
Clair, Maxine. Rattlebone Interconnected short stories portray the teenage years of an African
American girl in a middle-class black suburb. She grows from child to youth through
adventure and insights, including a local airplane crash and her accidental discovery of
parental infidelity.
Clark, Catherine. Truth or dairy. Courtney Von Dragen Smith, a high school senior, is dumped by
her boyfriend, Dave, after he goes off to college.
---. Wurst case scenario Courtney, a vegetarian animal-rights activist, records in her diary the
events of the beginning of her freshman year at a Wisconsin college, far away from
Colorado and her boyfriend Grant, surrounded by cheese- and meat-lovers.
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---. Frozen rodeo. High-school junior Peggy Fleming Farrell finds herself without a car, working
at the Gas 'n Git, and fantasizing about a boyfriend during the hot summer her distracted
parents are expecting yet another baby to join their ice-skating family.
Clark, Mary Higgins. A stranger is watching. The family of a murder victim, a journalist, and the
man convicted of the killing find their lives bound together as the execution hour
approaches, while the person who knows the truth about the murder waits to plunge them
into an abyss of terror.
Clarke, Judith. Kalpana's dream Neema's struggle to complete an essay on the topic "Who Am I"
for her freshman English class is complicated by the arrival of Kalpana, her Indian greatgrandmother who has come to Australia chasing her dream of flying, and although they do
not speak the same language, the two find common ground in skateboarder Gull Oliver.
Clavell, James. Children's story. A new teacher arrives to take charge of a grade school classroom
after the U.S. has been conquered by an enemy nation.
Cohn, Rachel. Gingerbread. After being expelled from a fancy boarding school, Cyd Charisse's
problems with her mother escalate after Cyd falls in love with a sensitive surfer and is
subsequently sent from San Francisco to New York City to spend time with her biological
father.
Cole, Sheila. What kind of love? : the diary of a pregnant teenager. When a fifteen-year-old girl
with a promising future learns that she is pregnant, she faces the most difficult decision of
her young life.
Coman, Carolyn. Many stones. After her sister Laura is murdered in South Africa, Berry and her
estranged father travel there to participate in the dedication of a memorial in her name.
Connelly, Neil O. St. Michael’s scales. Keegan Flannery, feeling responsible for his twin brother's
death and his mother's mental illness, believes he must atone by committing suicide before
his sixteenth birthday, but he gains new insights when he joins his school's wrestling team.
Cooney, Caroline B. Driver's ed. Three teenagers' lives are changed forever when they
thoughtlessly steal a stop sign from a dangerous intersection and a young mother is killed in
an automobile accident there.
---. Burning up : a novel When a girl she had met at an inner city church is murdered, fifteenyear-old Macey channels her grief into a school project that leads her to uncover prejudice
she had not imagined in her grandparents and their wealthy Connecticut community.
---. Tune in anytime. When Sophie's father suddenly decides to divorce Sophie's mother and
marry her sister Marley's college roommate, Sophie feels like she is trapped in an endless
soap opera.
---. Code Orange. While conducting research for a school paper on smallpox, Mitty finds an
envelope containing 100-year-old smallpox scabs and fears that he has infected himself and
all of New York City.
Cormier, Robert. In the middle of the night. Denny is compelled to fight the accusations and
pranks his family has received for over 20 years when he discovers that when his father was
a teen, he was accused of standing idly by as 22 disadvantaged children were killed in an
accident.
---. Tunes for bears to dance to. Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family's problems by
watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor, but when Henry is
manipulated into betraying his friend he comes to know true evil.
---. I am the cheese : a novel Fourteen-year-old Adam Fraser discovers that his identity, his life,
and even his family are all fictitious creations of a government conspiracy.
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---. The chocolate war A realistic, hard-edged study of a high school student who faces a
showdown with the school's secret society when he refuses to be bullied.
---. Beyond the chocolate war: a novel. “Archie, leader of the Vigils, the secret society that
dominates a Catholic high school for boys, is a senior now and chosen his successor, a less
subtle and more openly vindictive sophomore. Several of the Vigils rebel against Archie ...
but only Archie wins.”
---. After the first death. “A busload of children is hijacked by a band of terrorists whose
demands include the exposure of a military brainwashing project.”
Craven, Margaret. I heard the owl call my name Not knowing that he has a fatal illness, a young
Anglican priest is assigned to serve a parish of Kwakiutl Indians in the seacoast wilds of
British Columbia. Among these vanishing Indians, Mark Brian learns enough of the
meaning of life not to fear death.
Creech, Sharon. Walk two moons. After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal
and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal
recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.
Crew, Linda. Children of the river. Having fled Cambodia four years earlier to escape the Khmer
Rouge army, seventeen-year-old Sundara is torn between remaining faithful to her own
people and enjoying life in her Oregon high school as a "regular" American.
Crutcher, Chris. Ironman. In Mr. Nakatani's "Anger Management Class, " gutsy down-on-theirluck teenage survivors learn to understand their own fury and what it makes them do--then
stand up and own their actions.
---. The Crazy Horse Electric game. A high school athlete, frustrated at being disabled after an
accident, runs away from home to Oakland, California, and is helped back to mental and
physical health by a Black benefactor and the people in a special school where he enrolls.
---. Whale talk. Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns
organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a
swimming team and recruits some of the school's less popular students.
---. Running loose. Louie, a high school senior in a small Idaho town, learns about sportsmanship,
love, and death as he matures.
---. Stotan! A high school coach invites members of his swimming team to a memorable week of
rigorous training that tests their moral fiber as well as their physical stamina.
---. The sledding hill. Billy, recently deceased, keeps an eye on his best friend, fourteen-year-old
Eddie, and helps him stand up to a conservative minister and English teacher who is
orchestrating a censorship challenge.
Culin, Charlotte. Cages of glass, flowers of time Claire Burden feels utterly alone in the world.
Deserted by her artist father, she must live for the first time with her mother, an alcoholic
who alternately abuses her, ignores, her, and--worst of all--forbids Claire to do the drawing
and painting she loves.
Curtis, Christopher Paul. Bucking the Sarge Deeply involved in his cold and manipulative
mother's shady business dealings in Flint,Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense
of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home For Men, all the while dreaming
of going to college and becoming a philosopher.
Czech, Jan M. Grace happens : a novel The daughter of a famous actress, fifteen-year-old Grace
has never known the identity of her father, but she hopes to find some answers while
spending the summer at her mother's childhood home on Martha's Vineyard.
10
Danielewski, Mark Z. Only revolutions : Only revolutions. Presents a story about teenage lovers
Hailey and Sam printed on two sides with one side telling the story from Hailey's point of
view, and the other from Sam's.
Davies, Luke. Candy. Candy, her lover, and heroin form an unstoppable threesome until the dope
runs out.
Dean, Zoey. American beauty : an A-list novel. As graduation approaches, Anna finds herself
attracted to her father's intern and unsure of Ben, Cammie learns more about her mother's
death, and Sam tries to win back Eduardo and find her mother.
Deem, James M. 3 NBs of Julian Drew. The journals of a troubled fifteen-year-old boy who lives
with his father and emotionally and physically abusive stepmother and her children after the
death of his own mother years ago.
Dent, Grace. LBD : live & fabulous. Now fifteen years old, Ronnie, Fleur, and Claude, with
Fleur's sister as their chaperone, are having the time of their lives at the Astlebury music
festival when Fleur suddenly disappears while crowd surfing.
D'Erasmo, Stacey. A seahorse year. A San Francisco family that prides itself on being nontraditional is left grasping for some sort of stability when sixteen-year-old Christopher, the
son of a gay father and lesbian mother, is diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Dessen, Sarah. Dreamland: a novel After her older sister runs away, sixteen-year-old Caitlin
decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive
relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant, and dangerous.
---. Keeping the moon. Fifteen-year-old Colie, a former fat girl, spends the summer working as a
waitress in a beachside restaurant, staying with her overweight and eccentric Aunt Mira,
and trying to explore her sense of self.
---. This lullaby: a novel. Remy, a master at getting rid of boyfriends before any emotional
attachments form, finds herself strangely unwilling to free herself from Dexter, a messy,
disorganized, impulsive musician who she suspects she has come to love.
---. Someone like you Halley's junior year of high school includes the death of her best friend
Scarlett's boyfriend, the discovery that Scarlett is pregnant, and Halley's own first serious
relationship.
---. The truth about forever. The summer following her father's death, Macy plans to work at the
library and wait for her brainy boyfriend to return from camp, but instead she goes to work
at a catering business where she makes new friends and finally faces her grief.
Deuker, Carl. Night hoops. While trying to prove that he is good enough to play on his high
school's varsity basketball team, Nick must also deal with his parent's divorce and the
erratic behavior of a troubled classmates across the street.
D'Lacey, Chris. From e to you. Guy and Annabelle become cyber-friends. But their budding
relationship creates havoc when they start to speculate about what caused the feud between
their fathers.
Donavan, Stacey. Dive. Fifteen-year-old Virginia's world begins to fall apart when her dog is hit
by a car, her father is hospitalized with a mysterious illness, and her best friend ignores her.
Dorfman, Ariel. Burning city. Sixteen-year-old Heller Highland, who is living with his
grandparents while his parents are away, burns rubber across Manhattan delivering bad
news by bicycle, and as a summer heat wave melts the city, he is struck by first love.
Dorris, Michael. Yellow raft in blue water. Fifteen-year-old half-Indian Rayona longs for a cozy,
suburban family, but her mother abandons her on the barren Montana reservation with her
fierce grandmother who doesn't know her and doesn't want to.
11
Doyle, Roddy. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Draper, Sharon M. The battle of Jericho. A high school junior and his cousin suffer the
ramifications of joining what seems to be a "reputable" school club.
---. Tears of a tiger The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile
accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others
in the school.
---. Forged by fire. Gerald, a teenager who has spent years protecting his fragile half-sister from
their abusive father, must face the prospect of one final confrontation before the problem
can be solved.
---. Darkness before dawn. Recovering from the recent suicide of her ex-boyfriend, senior class
president Keisha Montgomery finds herself attracted to a dangerous, older man.
Duncan, Lois. Daughters of Eve. "The Daughters of Eve is a very small and secretive service club
that has thrived at Modesta High for over 15 years. One aspect about this secret society that
is new, however, is the advisor, Irene Stark has been on the faculty of this small town
school for barely more than a year ... [The situation] becomes an outlet for Irene's personal
hostilities [towards men] as she leads the group into greater and greater acts of violence.
School equipment is damaged, family members of some of the girls are abused, and
ultimately a death occurs.
---. Down a dark hall. Suspicious and uneasy about the atmosphere at her new boarding school,
fourteen-year-old Kit slowly realizes why she and the other three students at the school
were selected.
Eggers, Dave. You shall know our velocity! A moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly
around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound
loss.
Elliot, Jessie. Girls dinner club. Junie, Celia, and Danielle, three ethnically diverse high schoolers
in Brooklyn, form a friendship while cooking dinners together and helping one another sort
through their romantic entanglements. Enger, Leif. Peace like a river. "When Reuben
Land's older brother Davy kills two marauders who have come to harm the family, the town
is divided between those who see him as a hero and those who see him as a cold-blooded
murderer. On the morning of the trial, Davy escapes and his family sets out in search of
him. With Jeremiah at the helm, the family covers territory far more glorious than even the
Badlands. By the time the journey is over, they will have traversed boundaries of a
different nature entirely. Set in the 1960s and marked by a soul-expanding sense of place,
Peace Like a River is a heroic quest, a tragedy, a romance, and a heartfelt meditation on the
possibility of magic in the everyday world.".
Eugenides, Jeffrey. The virgin suicides. The narrator and his friends piece together the events that
led up to the suicides of the Lisbon girls--brainy Therese, fastidious Mary, ascetic Bonnie,
libertine Lux, and saintly Cecilia.
---. Middlesex. Three generations of a Greek American family find themselves plagued by a
mutant gene which causes bizarre side effects in the family's teenage girls.
Faulkner, William. Intruder in the dust. "When Lucas, an elderly Negro, is accused of murdering
a white man, Charles, a 16-year-old white boy, works to save him from being lynched.
Ferris, Jean. Invincible summer. Seventeen-year-old Robin, in treatment for leukemia, falls in
love with a boy who also has the disease, and together they attempt to survive their ordeal.
12
---. Looking for home. Daphne decides to run away from her father's violent moods, get a job, and
give her baby up for adoption. It seems like a simple plan, but it's really the hardest thing
she's ever had to do.
Fienberg, Anna. Borrowed light. An Australian teenager narrates the story of her family's
miscommunications and her need to deal with an unexpected pregnancy. Her grandmother,
a well-known astrophysicist, gives astronomy lessons that serve as a well-integrated
metaphor for the teen's views of herself, her family, and her dilemma. Astronomy is
countered by her mother's affection for new age and supernatural approaches to solving life
problems.
Fitch, Janet. White oleander : a novel. Astrid, the only child of a single mother, struggles to find a
place for herself in a world full of foster homes and impossible circumstances, after her
mother is jailed for murder.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender is the night. The tragic and haunting story of Dick Diver, a young
psychiatrist whose career is thwarted and his genius numbed through marriage to the
exquisite and wealthy Nicole Warren.
Flagg, Fannie. Daisy Fay and the miracle man. Daisy Fay is not afraid to speak what is on her
mind, and the townspeople in the Gulf Coast's Shell Beach don't always appreciate her
meddling in their business.
Fleischman, Paul. A fate totally worse than death. Three self-centered members of the ruling
clique become convinced that a beautiful exchange student is the ghost of the student whose
death they caused the year before.
---. Whirligig. While traveling to each corner of the country to build a whirligig in memory of the girl whose
death he causes, sixteen-year-old Brian finds forgiveness and atonement.
Flinn, Alexandra. Fade to black An HIV-positive high school student hospitalized after being
attacked, the bigot accused of the crime, and the only witness, a classmate with Down
Syndrome, reveal how the assault has changed their lives as they tell of its aftermath.
---. Breathing underwater. Sent to counseling for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin, and made to keep
a journal, sixteen-year-old Nick recounts his relationship with Caitlin, examines his
controlling behavior and anger, and describes living with his abusive father.
---. Breaking point Fifteen-year-old Paul enters an exclusive private school and falls under the
spell of a charismatic boy who may be using him.
Forman, James D. My enemy, my brother. Released from a concentration camp after World War
II, a sixteen-year-old boy settles on an Israeli kibbutz but finds his new life threatened by
the growing conflict between Arabs and Jews.
Forster, E. M. Maurice. Set in the elegant Edwardian world of Cambridge undergraduate life, this
story introduces fourteen year old Maurice Hall. The story follows Maurice through public
school and to Cambridge and on into his father's brokerage firm. Maurice is a conventional
young man in almost every way, except that he is homosexual.
Fox, Laurie Anne. My sister from the Black Lagoon : a novel of my life. A young woman
comes to terms with what it means to have a family member with mental illness.
Frank, E. R. America : a novel. America, a runaway boy who is being treated at Ridgeway, a New
York hospital, finds himself opening up to one of the doctors on staff and revealing things
about himself that he had always vowed to keep secret.
---. Life is funny : a novel. The lives of a number of young people of different races, economic
backgrounds, and family situations living in Brooklyn, New York, become intertwined over
a seven year period.
13
Frank, Lucy. Oy, Joy! Although her ailing uncle creates problems for her whole family when he
moves in with them, Joy survives his bungling attempts at matchmaking even as she plays
the game herself.
Fredericks, Mariah. The true meaning of cleavage. When Jess and Sari, best friends since seventh
grade, begin their freshman year of high school and Sari becomes obsessed with a senior
boy, Jess wonders if their friendship will survive.
Frey, James. A million little pieces. The author tells the fictionalized story of his recovery from
drug and alcohol addiction, beginning with his enrollment in a Minnesota rehabilitation
center after a two-week blackout and ending with his rejection of all Twelve Step programs.
Freymann-Weyr, Garret. My heartbeat. As she tries to understand the closeness
between
her older brother and his best friend, fourteen-year-old Ellen finds her relationship with
each of them changing.
Fuhrman, Chris. The dangerous lives of altar boys : a novel. A story about five young friends who
are altar boys at the Blessed Heart Catholic Church in Savannah, Georgia in the early
1970s.
Futcher, Jane. Crush : [a novel]. In her final year at a prestigious boarding school, reserved,
artistic Jinx is badly hurt by the treachery of rich, beautiful Lexie, a girl Jinx hoped might
be more than just a friend.
Gaines, Ernest J. The autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. From being freed after the Civil War
to her participation in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Miss Jane's life
provides an insight into history.
Gantos, Jack. Desire lines. When sixteen-year-old Walker gets caught up in a witch-hunt against
homosexuals, he is left to stand by and watch as a tragedy unfolds.
Garden, Nancy. Good moon rising. Jan begins her senior year of high school not expecting that
she will lose the starring part in the school play, take over as director when her beloved
drama teacher becomes ill, and realize that she is a lesbian.
---. Annie on my mind. Liza puts aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at school, but
eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of people.
Gardner, Graham. Inventing Elliot. Elliot, a victim of bullying, invents a calmer,
cooler
self when he changes schools in the middle of freshman year, but soon attracts the wrong
kind of attention from the Guardians who "maintain order" at the new school.
Garfinkle, Debra. Storky: how I lost my nickname and won the girl. Fourteen-year-old high
school student Michael "Storky" Pomerantz's journal describes his freshman year, from
dealing with his mother's dating his dentist to attempting to win the heart of the girl he
loves.
Gauthier, Gail. Saving the planet & stuff. After losing his summer job with his uncle, sixteenyear-old Michael agrees to go to work for an environmentalist magazine in Vermont run by
friends of his grandparents.
Gibbons, Kaye. Ellen Foster. Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young
child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with
several foster children.
Giles, Gail. Shattering glass. Rob, the charismatic leader of the senior class, provokes unexpected
violence when he turns the school nerd into Prince Charming.
Gilmour, H. B. So long, daddy. After their mother suddenly dies, Maddie and Jason must move
in with their world-renowned fashion photographer father. The father they've never known.
14
Dropped abruptly from rural Vermont into their father's glamorous, high-powered world of
beautiful people, dangerous drugs and casual sex, Maddie and Jason must grow up fast.
Gilstrap, John. Nathan's run : a novel. Twelve-year-old Nathan Bailey, an escapee from a
juvenile detention center who has been accused of killing a guard, becomes the center of a
national dialogue on violent youth crime, the object of a nationwide manhunt, and the target
of a professional killer.
Going, Kelly. Fat kid rules the world. Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and
weighing nearly three hundred pounds, gets a new perspective on life when Curt, a semihomeless teen who is a genius on guitar, asks Troy to be the drummer in a rock band.
Goldberg, Myla. Bee season : a novel. Eliza Naumann is used to being the unremarkable member
of her family, but when she wins a series of spelling bees, her once distant family begins to
lavish praise on her, bringing about surprising complications.
Golding, William. Lord of the flies : [a novel]. A group of schoolboys stranded on a small Pacific
island must look to themselves to survive without adult help. Some make it; some don't.
Gonzalez, Julie. Wings. Ben Delaney spends his life believing that he will one day
sprout wings and fly; and much to the dismay of his brother, Ian, Ben continues to jump
from heights that increase with his age.
Grant, Cynthia D. The white horse. In her writing for a concerned teacher, sixteen-year-old Raina
reveals her troubles with a dysfunctional family, life on the streets, drug abuse, and finally
an unplanned pregnancy.
Greene, Bette. The summer of my German soldier. Sheltering an escaped German prisoner of
war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a 12-year-old Jewish girl in
Arkansas.
---. The drowning of Stephan Jones. As her mother battles a citizens' group that wants to ban all
"anti-Christian" literature from the public library, Carla faces her own battle of torn
loyalties when her boyfriend starts persecuting the homosexual owners of an antiques shop.
Griffin, Adele. Where I want to be. Two teenaged sisters, separated by death but still
connected, work through their feelings of loss over the closeness they shared as children
that was later destroyed by one's mental illness, and finally make peace with each other.
Grimes, Nikki. Bronx masquerade. While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx
high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears
to their formerly clueless classmates.
Grisham, John. Bleachers. When his old coach dies, high school football star Neely
Crenshaw returns to his hometown after fifteen years, reunites with his former teammates,
and struggles to resolve his mixed feelings about the man.
Gross, Philip. Turn to stone. Nick, a sixteen-year-old runaway, is selected for training
at
a secluded mansion to become one of the elite of living statues, actors who can live a life of
ease if they are willing to train hard enough and please their mysterious benefactor, but who
may be destroyed if they do not measure up.
Grove, Vicki. The starplace. Thirteen-year-old Frannie learns hard lessons about
prejudice and segregation when she becomes friends with a young black girl who moves
into her small Oklahoma town in 1961.
Grumley, Michael. Life drawing : a novel. Story of Mickey who loves James and ends up on
drugs in Los Angeles.
15
Guest, Judith. Ordinary people. An upper-middle-class family struggles with the death of one of
it's sons in a boating accident and the subsequent suicide attempt by the other son who feels
responsible for his brother's death.
Guy, Rosa. The friends. Phyllisia eventually recognizes that her own selfish pride rather than her
mother's death and her father's tyrannical behavior created the gulf between her and her best
friend.
---. Ruby. Ruby Cathy, a young woman from the West Indies trying to adjust to life in Harlem,
finds herself desperately lonely and needing love. She enters into a relationship with her
classmate, Daphne.
Haddix, Margaret Peterson. Takeoffs and landings. An overweight, timid fifteen-year-old boy
and his popular fourteen-year-old sister begin to overcome their guilt over their father's
death and reconnect with each other and their emotionally-distant mother when they
accompany her on a two-week speaking tour.
Haddon, Mark. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Despite his overwhelming fear
of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old
boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information
about his mother.
Hamill, Pete. Snow in August: a novel. Eleven-year-old Irish Catholic Michael Devlin and Rabbi
Judah Hirsch form a wonderful, if unlikely, friendship in Brooklyn in 1947, but the actions
of a group of anti-Semitic thugs soon have them trapped in a spiral of hate and hoping for a
miracle.
Hamilton, Jane. The short history of a prince: a novel. Fifteen-year-old Walter McCloud dreamed
of becoming a ballet dancer, but lack of talent, combined with the death of his brother,
caused him to take a different path in life which ultimately leads him to a place of healing
and happiness.
Hamilton, Virginia. The planet of Junior Brown. Already a leader in New York's underground
world of homeless children, Buddy Clark takes on the responsibility of protecting the
overweight, emotionally disturbed friend with whom he has been playing hooky from
eighth grade all semester.
Hanauer, Cathi. My sister's bones: a novel. Billie Weinstein has always depended on her older
sister Cassie for advice and support, but when Cassie gets sick, the tables are turned,
complicating Billie's already difficult teenage life.
Hansen, Ron. Atticus: a novel. Colorado rancher Atticus Cody travels to Mexico to recover the
body of his son Scott, believing the young man had committed suicide, but when he
arrives he begins to suspect Scott was murdered and he is driven by grief, anger, and love to
try and understand his son's death.
Harper, Jo. Delfino's journey. A sixteen-year-old Aztec boy named Delfino tries to cross the
border into Texas to help his frail, pregnant sister get medical care, but deadly challenges
arise in the form of violence and starvation in a border slave camp.
Hartinger, Brent. Geography Club. A group of gay and lesbian teenagers finds mutual support
when they form the "Geography Club" at their high school.
---. The Order of the Poison Oak. Sixteen-year-old Russel,having endured the antagonism of his
classmates since admitting he is homosexual, decides to take a counselor job
at a
summer camp for burn victims, but finds ten-year-old boys have just as many problems as
he does.
16
Haruf, Kent. Plainsong High school teacher Tom Guthrie, abandoned by his wife and left to raise
his two young sons alone, becomes involved in the lives of a pregnant, homeless teenager
and two crusty, bachelor farmers.
Hautman, Pete. Invisible. Doug and Andy are unlikely best friends--one a loner obsessed by his
model trains, the other a popular student involved in football and theater--who grew up
together and share a bond that nothing can sever.
---. Godless. When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to
worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its
own.
---. Sweetblood. After a lifetime of being a model student, sixteen-year-old Lucy Szabo is
suddenly in trouble at school, at home, with the so-called vampires she has met online and
in person, and most of all with her uncontrolled diabetes.
Hautzig, Deborah. Second star to the right. As 14-year-old Leslie begins to shed the weight she
feels makes her imperfect, she finds it increasingly difficult to reach out for the
psychological help she knows she needs.
Haycak, Cara. Red palms. When fourteen-year-old Benita's wealthy family goes bankrupt
as a result of the Depression, they go from their luxurious life in Guayaquil, Ecuador to a
primitive island, with the wild scheme of starting a coconut plantation.
Haynes, Melinda. Mother of pearl : a novel. In a small Mississippi town, a black man and
a young white girl are seeking the family, love, and commitment they never had.
Head, Ann. Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones. Despite the pressures of a forced marriage and parental
protectiveness, July and Bo Jo struggle to face adulthood.
Hegi, Ursula. Stones from the river. Set in Germany prior to and during World War II, this is the
story of a dwarf, Trudi Montag, and her struggle to accept herself and to be accepted. From
the tribulations of those around her (her mother "who flees in madness", her friend Georg
who is trying to understand his sexuality, and the Jews Trudi is hiding in her cellar) she
learns how to
appreciate her own individuality.
Henderson, Aileen Kilgore. Treasure of Panther Peak. Twelve-year-old Page and her mother
travel all the way from Alabama to the rugged, isolated Big Bend National Park in Texas,
where her mother gets a job teaching in a small school and where they start a new life away
from Page's abusive father.
Hentoff, Nat. I'm really dragged but nothing gets me down. As a high school senior struggles to
accept either the consequences of draft resistance or its alternatives, he must define his
responsibility to himself, his family, and his country.
Herbert, Frank. Chapterhouse: Dune. The survivors from the Old Empire, the Bene Gesserit, are
fighting the Honored Matres so they can build a new empire out of the ruins of the old one.
Herlihy, Dirlie. Ludie's song. In rural Georgia in the 1950's, a young white girl's secret friendship
with a black family exposes them all to unforeseen dangers.
Herman, John, 1944-. Labyrinth. As he struggles to cope with his father's suicide and his
mother's possible remarriage, fourteen-year-old Gregory is plagued by recurring dreams that
make him question what is real.
Hesse, Karen. Witness. A history-inspired novel, told in the voices of eleven characters, about two
young girls, one Jewish and the other African-American, who come to the
attention
of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan in a small Vermont town in 1924.
17
Hesser, Terry Spencer. Kissing doorknobs. Fourteen-year-old Tara describes how her increasingly
strange compulsions begin to take over her life and affect her relationships with her family
and friends.
Hewett, Lorri. Dancer. Sixteen-year-old Stephanie struggles to perfect her ballet dancing as her
classes are complicated by the introduction of a new male dancer.
Hiaasen, Carl. Hoot. Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in
another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.
---. Flush. With their father jailed for sinking a river boat, Noah Underwood and his younger
sister, Abbey, must gather evidence that the owner of this floating casino is emptying his
bilge tanks into the protected waters around their Florida Keys home.
Hinton, S. E. Tex. “Fourteen-year-old Tex lives with his 17-year-old brother Mason in a rural
area. Their father hasn't been home in five months, and the relationship between the two
boys is tense. Each has his own problems, fears, and growing pains which keep him
alienated from his brother, until a dramatic and terrifying experience forces them to seek
comfort and support from each other.”
---. Rumble fish. A junior high school boy idolizes his older brother, the coolest, toughest guy in
the neighborhood, and wants to be just like him.
---. The outsiders. “From the point of view of Ponyboy Curtis, the author relates the story of the
Greasers, who are from the lower class, and their conflict with the Socs, who are their
middle-class opposite number. For the Greasers, the gang comprises their street family, all
the family that some of them have. In the collision between the two social factions, two
buddies die, one as a hood, the other as a hero.”
---. That was then, this is now. Sixteen-year-old Mark and Bryon have been like brothers since
childhood, but now, as their involvement with girls, gangs, and drugs increases, their
relationship seems to gradually disintegrate.
Hobbs, Will. Downriver. Jessie and the other rebellious teenage members of a wilderness
survival school team abandon their adult leader and try to run the dangerous white water of
the Grand Canyon.
---. Bearstone. Fourteen-year-old Native American, Cloyd, was trouble to himself and everyone
else. Sent first to a group home for boys, he eventually ends up living with an old rancher,
where he discovers a small carved turquoise bear in an Indian burial cave. Using the
strength of his ancestors, he finally begins to understand himself and his relation to others.
Høeg, Peter. Borderliners At a private school in Copenhagen in the 1970s, three students are
drawn together and soon discover they are unwittingly part of the school's
experiment in controlling children.
Hoffman, Alice. At risk. Amanda, aneleven-year-old girl, contracts AIDS. As her family and their
friends and neighbors struggle to come to terms with the disease, ordinary people are
transformed into heroes and heroines.
---. Turtle moon. A transplanted New York woman is determined to start a new life with her
twelve-year-old son, Keith in Verity, Florida. When the son, Keith, runs away from home-inexplicably taking along a motherless baby--his mother is perplexed and terrified. She
takes off on her own journey to find him.
Hogan, Linda. Power. Sixteen-year-old Native American Omishto, member of the Taiga tribe,
whose numbers are dwindling as much as the endangered--and federally protected--Florida
panther that the tribe considers an ancestor, is torn between her Westernized mother and her
traditional aunt Ama, a tribal elder who kills a panther in a desperate act to save her people.
18
Holland, Isabelle. The man without a face. “From his tutor, the badly scarred recluse Justice
McLeod, 14-year-old Charles Norstadt learns much more than the meaning of
homosexuality.
---. Of love and death and other journeys. Meg Grant's sixteenth year is a time of love and loss
and new understanding.
Holt, Kimberly Willis. When Zachary Beaver came to town. During the summer of
1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a
sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.
Homes, A. M. Jack. Fifteen-year-old Jack's confused feelings for his father, who left him and his
mother four years earlier, are further complicated when he finds that his father is gay.
Hopkins, Ellen. Burned. Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon
family, is sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer where she temporarily escapes her
alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she
returns home.
---. Impulse. Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada's Aspen Springs mental hospital after each
has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or
anyone else in their lives.
Houston, Julian. New boy. As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school, a young
black man is witness to the persecution of another student with bad acne who is also Jewish.
Howe, James. The watcher. As she sits watching a seemingly perfect family and a handsome
lifeguard on the beach, a lonely, troubled girl projects herself into the fantasy lives she has
created for them.
Howe, Norma. The adventures of Blue Avenger : a novel. On his sixteenth birthday, still
trying to cope with the unexpected death of his father, David Schumacher decides--or does
he--to change his name to Blue Avenger.
Hughes, Dean, 1943-. Soldier boys. Two boys, one German and one American, are eager to join
their respective armies during World War II, and their paths cross at the Battle of the Bulge.
Hughes, Lynne. You are not alone : teens talk about life after the loss of a parent The author
offers practical advice for teens who have lost one or both of their parents in death, and
describes from her own experiences how to move through the grieving process.
Hull, Jonathan. The distance from Normandy. A troubled teenage boy and his grandfather, a
veteran of the D-Day landing, each confront their own demons.
Ingold, Jeanette. The window. When she comes to live with relatives on a Texas farm, fifteenyear-old Mandy encounters the grandmother she never knew and begins to come to terms
with her blindness caused by the automobile accident that killed her mother.
Jackson, Shirley. The lottery.
---. We have always lived in the castle. Blackwood protects her sister, Constance, from the
curiosity and hostility of the villagers after murders occur on the family estate.
Jacobson, Jennifer. Stained. In Weaver Falls, New Hampshire, in 1975, seventeen-year-old
Jocelyn looks for answers when her lifelong neighbor and friend, Gabe, turns up missing
and she learns that, while her boyfriend has been telling everything to a priest, Gabe has
been keeping terrible secrets.
James, Brian. Pure sunshine. Seventeen-year-old Brendon embarks on a path-changing two
day high on California acid, or "pure sunshine," during which time he begins to break away
from his friends Will and Kevin.
19
Jen, Gish. Who's Irish?: stories. Who's Irish -- Birthmates -- The water faucet vision -- Duncan in
China -- Just wait -- Chin -- In the American society -- House, house, house. Stories
highlight the generational divide in the Chinese-American community.
Jen, Gish. Mona in the promised land. Mona Chang, the American-born daughter of
Chinese immigrants, fully embraces the ideals of freedom and converts to Judaism in the
first of many rebellions she stages in her search for individualism while growing up in the
1960s and 1970s.
Jenkins, A. M. Breaking boxes. When in the course of an unusual friendship Charlie reveals
something confidential about his brother, he must decide if he can accept the risks of caring.
---. Damage. Seventeen-year-old football hero Austin, trying to understand the inexplicable
depression that has drained his interest in life, thinks that he has found relief in a girl who
seems very special.
---. Out of order. Popular sophomore baseball star Colt Trammel faces a personal crisis when his
girlfriend dumps him, his failing grades threaten to bump him from the team, and he finds
himself drawn to a new, green-haired girl at school.
Jett, Sarah J. Night of the pompon. Jendra's attempt to become a cheerleader at her high school
and is initiated by worshiping a sacred glass-enclosed pompon which has unexpected
results.
Johnson, Angela. Heaven. Fourteen-year-old Marley's seemingly perfect life in the small town of
Heaven is disrupted when she discovers that her father and mother are not her real parents.
---. Looking for Red. A thirteen-year-old girl struggles to cope with the loss of her beloved older
brother, who disappeared four months earlier off the coast of Cape Cod.
---. The first part last. Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father
and must care for his adored baby daughter.
Johnson, Maureen. The key to the Golden Firebird: a novel. As three teenaged sisters struggle to
cope with their father's sudden death, they find they must reexamine friendships, lifelong
dreams, and their relationships with each other and their father.
Johnson, Scott. Safe at second. Paulie Lockwood's best friend Todd Bannister is destined for the
major leagues until a line drive to the head causes him to lose an eye and they both must
find a new future for themselves.
Joinson, Carla. A diamond in the dust. Despite her mother's objections and the love of an older
classmate, sixteen-year-old Katy is determined to find a better life for herself beyond her
family's poverty and sorrow in the Illinois coal mining town where they live.
Joyce, James. A portrait of the artist as a young man. This autobiographical novel “portrays the
childhood, school days, adolescence, and early manhood of Stephen Dedalus, later one of
the leading characters in [the author's book] Ulysses. Stephen's growing self-awareness as
an artist forces him to reject the whole narrow world in which he has been brought up,
including
family ties, nationalism, and the Catholic religion.”
Juby, Susan. Miss Smithers. Sixteen-year-old Alice MacLeod's life as an outcast begins to change
when she experiments with being friends with different sorts of people, tries drinking
alcohol and eating meat, and competes in the Miss Smithers beauty pageant.
---. Alice MacLeod, realist at last. Sixteen-year-old Alice uses her screen-writing aspirations to
help her get through a challenging period in her life after her boyfriend goes to Scotland,
her mother is jailed for environmental activism, and her depressed father cannot get a job.
20
---. Alice, I think. Fifteen-year-old Alice keeps a diary as she struggles to cope with the
embarrassments and trials of family, dating, school, work, small town life, and a serious
case of “outcastitis.”
Kadohata, Cynthia. The floating world. In the 1950s, Olivia and her extended family travel along
California's coast while her stepfather works at transient jobs, and although her grandmother
annoys her with her stories, after her grandmother's death, the stories continue to guide
Olivia in her life.
Kane, Andrea. No way out. Julia Talbot becomes involved with her favorite student's
family which unravels secrets the family would rather keep hidden.
Kata, Elizabeth. A patch of blue. A black man, for whom life had been pain, struggle, and
sometimes terror, falls in love with a blind white girl.
Kehret, Peg. Cages. After losing an acting role and fighting with her alcoholic stepfather, Kit is
arrested for shoplifting and made to work, as part of her sentence, at an animal shelter.
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort woman. Narrated by the living voice of Beccah, a young Korean
American girl, and the spiritual voice of her mother, Akiko, this story of past and present
explores the universal conflict between mother and daughter and the peace that can be
found in that relationship.
Kellogg, Marjorie. Like the lion's tooth.
Kenan, Randall. A visitation of spirits : a novel. Sixteen-year-old Horace Cross, a descendant of
slaves and deacons of the church, spends a horror-filled spring night wrestling with the guilt
of discovering he is attracted to other men.
Kent, Deborah. Why me?: the courage to live. Teenager Chloe Peterson is diagnosed with
lupus and finds herself catapulted into a world where she struggles with her disease and her
relationships with her friends.
Kerr, M. E. Deliver us from Evie. “Parr Burrman and his family face some difficult times when
word spreads through their rural Missouri town that his older sister is a lesbian, and she
leaves the family farm to live with the daughter of the town's banker.”
---. Night kites. The concepts of loyalty, guilt, and family solidarity are explored as Erick
experiences terminations of life, friendship, and love.
---. The son of someone famous. Living under a pseudonym with his grandfather in a small town,
the son of a celebrity teams up with the local tomboy, “an alliance he calls Nothing Power
and she calls Going Steady."”
---. Linger. When his older brother suddenly joins the army and is sent to the Persian Gulf,
sixteen-year-old Gary begins to take a new look at the restaurant that has been the focal
point of his family and their small Pennsylvania town.
---. Slap your sides: a novel. Life in their Pennsylvania hometown changes for Jubal Shoemaker
and his family when his older brother witnesses to his Quaker beliefs by becoming a
conscientious objector during World War II.
Kesey, Ken. One flew over the cuckoo's nest. A struggle for power and authority between a head
nurse and a defiant male patient in a mental institution leads to a climax of hate, violence,
and death. Also available as a play.
Kessler, Cristina. No condition is permanent. When shy fourteen-year-old Jodie accompanies her
anthropologist mother to live in Sierra Leone, she befriends a local girl but encounters a
cultural divide that cannot be crossed.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. “Charlie Gordon, aged 32, is mentally retarded and enrolls
in a class to 'become smart.' He keeps a journal of his progress after an experimental
21
operation that increases his I.Q. Altough Charlie becomes brilliant, he is unhappy because
he cannot shed his former personality and is tormented by his memories. In the end he
begins to lose the mental powers he has gained.”
Kidd, Sue Monk. The secret life of bees. Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an
African-American woman who has cared from Lily since her mother's death ten years
earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe
haven in Tiburon, South Carolina at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and
August.
Kim, Nancy. Chinhominey's secret: a novel. Conflict grows between two Korean American
sisters who were raised with very different family expectations.
King, Buzz. Silicon songs.
King, Stephen. Thinner. When overweight Billy Halleck accidentally hits a gypsy woman as she
is crossing the street, he senses a curse upon him. He begins to lose weight with horrifying
results.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Pigs in heaven. Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee Indian daughter
Turtle “are on a trip to the Hoover Dam, where Turtle is the only person to see a man fall
over the side .... The rescue makes Turtle a heroine. But becoming a heroine, which
culminates in an appearence on ‘Oprah,’ engenders a new disaster. Annawake Fourkiller, an
Indian-rights lawyer, sees the white mother with her Cherokee daughter on TV and decides
the child must be returned to the Cherokee Nation.”--Newsweek.
---. The bean trees: a novel. In this novel, “Taylor Greer, a poor, young woman, flees her
Kentucky home and heads west....While passing through Oklahoma, she becomes
responsible for a two-year-old Cherokee girl. The two continue on the road. When they roll
of the highway in Tucson, Taylor and the child, whom she has named Turtle, ... meet
Mattie, a widow who runs Jesus Is Lord Used Tires and is active in the sanctuary movement
on the side.” Ms.
Klass, David. You don't know me: a novel. Fourteen-year-old John creates alternative realities in
his mind as he tries to deal with his mother's abusive boyfriend, his crush on a beautiful, but
shallow classmate and other problems at school.
Klein, Norma. Sunshine : a novel. Stricken with terminal cancer, eighteen-year-old Jacquelyn
describes her thoughts and her life with her husband and baby during the brief time before
her death.
Kluger, Steve. Almost like being in love: a novel. A high school jock and a nerd fall in love senior
year, only to part after an amazing summer of discovery to attend their respective colleges.
Flash forward twenty years. Travis and Craig both have great lives, but something is
missing.
Knowles, John. A separate peace. A tragic story of a fleeting, intense friendship between two
boys in a New England boarding school during the early years of World War II.
Koertge, Ronald. Stoner & Spaz. A troubled youth with cerebral palsy struggles toward selfacceptance with the help of a drug-addicted young woman.
---. Boy girl boy. Three troubled high school seniors, who plan to run away together from Illinois
to California after graduation, try to figure out who they are who they
want to be.
---. Margaux with an X. Margaux, known as a "tough chick" at her Los Angeles high school,
makes a connection with Danny, who, like her, struggles with the emotional impact of
family violence and abuse.
22
Koja, Kathe. Talk. Kit auditions for a controversial school play and discovers his talent for acting;
however, both he and his costar face crises in their view of themselves and in their
close relationships.
Kosinski, Jerzy. The painted bird. A young boy, abandoned by his parents during World War II,
wanders alone from one village to another in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.
Krach, Aaron. Half-life: a novel. The geography of Adam Westman's life changes dramatically in
the two weeks before graduation. When death and love arrive at once and unexpectedly-as
they often do-Adam learns that trouble sometimes has to rumble through a tidy world in
order to make miracles.
Krisher, Trudy. Spite fences. As she struggles with her troubled relationship with her
mother during the summer of 1960, a young girl is also drawn into the violence, hatred, and
racial tension in her small Georgia town.
Krovatin, Christopher. Heavy metal and you. High schooler Sam begins losing himself when he
falls for a preppy girl who wants him to give up getting wasted with his best friends and
even his passion for heavy metal music in order to become a better person.
Kuban, Karla. Marchlands: a novel. Fifteen-year-old Sophie Behr, pregnant by a worker on her
mother's ranch, tries to come to terms with her father's disappearance, her mother's insanity,
and her own, unstable, situation.
La Farge, Oliver. Laughing boy. The story of the romance between a Navajo boy and girl.
Lamott, Anne. Rosie: a novel. Elizabeth Ferguson, a woman who has been drifting through
her life without direction, learns she has a lot of growing up to do when her husband dies
and she is left alone to raise their daughter Rosie.
Lane, Dakota. The Orpheus obsession. Sixteen-year-old Anooshka Stargirl, whose homelife is
less than rosy, meets a rock singer named Orpheus and finds her obsession with him
drawing her into his world.
Lanham, Cheryl. Fighting back. After her mom dies, high school senior Amber
Makepeace moves away to live with her cousin. It's really hard being the new girl in town,
and when the school bully starts picking on her, she decides to fight back.
Lasky, Kathryn. Memoirs of a bookbat. Fourteen-year-old Harper, an avid reader of fantasy who
must hide her books from her fundamentalist parents, comes to realize that their public
promotion of censorship threatens her freedom to make her own choices.
Lawrence, Iain. Ghost boy. Unhappy in a home seemingly devoid of love, a fourteen-year-old
albino boy who thinks of himself as Harold the Ghost runs away to join the circus, where he
works with the elephants and searches for a sense of who he is.
---. The lightkeeper's daughter. When, after a four-year absence, seventeen-year-old Squid
returns to her childhood home on a remote lighthouse island off British Columbia with her
young daughter in tow, she and her parents try to come to terms with each other and the
painful events of the past, especially the death of her older brother.
Lee, Andrea. Sarah Phillips. From the perspective of her current, rather dissolute life in Paris, the
early life of Sarah Phillips--a proper middle-class upbringing in a proud and dignified Black
family--is gradually revealed.
Lee, Gus. China boy: a novel. Tells the story of a Chinese American family's relationship while
relating how Kai Ting learned to survive in a black San Francisco slum in the 1950s.
Lee, Marie G. Finding my voice. As she tries to enjoy her senior year and choose which
college she will attend, Korean American Ellen Sung must deal with the prejudice of some
of her classmates and pressure from her parents to get good grades.
23
L'Engle, Madeleine. Camilla. Fifteen-year-old Camilla gains new maturity through her
relationship with her best friend's brother and the growing realization that her parents are
fallible individuals.
LeRoy, J. T.. The heart is deceitful above all things. A collection of short autobiographical
stories explore the trials of a boy vying for his mother's attention as she searches for love,
struggling for control, and living on the streets of San Francisco. The book was later
discovered to have been written by a woman, Laura Albert.
Lesley, Craig. The sky fisherman. Tells the story of a young boy and his family in a small mill
town where love, death, and the coming of age are intertwined with a life of hard work and
confrontation with the forces of nature.
Letts, Billie. Where the heart is. Pregnant and overweight, Novalee Nation hopes for a
new life in a new state after her boyfriend dumps her in a Wal-Mart. She is the ultimate
survivor of an abusive family situation, poverty, bad personal relationships, and even of her
own bad luck. In a small Oklahoma town, she finds friends, creates her own family, builds
her trust in human
nature, and renews her spirit.
Levenkron, Steven. The luckiest girl in the world. Fifteen-year-old figure skater Katie Roskova
inflicts pain on herself when she can't manage her feeling about her absent father, her
overbearing mother, the pressures of her sport, and her school life.
---. The best little girl in the world. After being a model daughter all her life, fifteen-year-old
Francesca suddenly begins to starve herself and is diagnosed as suffering from a
psychological disorder known as anorexia nervosa.
Levin, Michael. Janine and Alex, Alex and Janine. Alex was a typical high school girl who
dreamed about living the life of a supermodel. Then she met Janine.
Levithan, David. Boy meets boy. Paul's simple high-school life is confused by his desire for
another boy who seems unattainable, until Paul's friends help him find the courage to pursue
him.
---. Are we there yet? Tricked by their parents into taking a trip to Italy together, two brothers--one
in high school and the other recently graduated from college--reflect on the directions of
their own lives and on the distance that has grown between them.
Levitin, Sonia. The singing mountain. While traveling in Israel for the summer, seventeen-yearold Mitch decides to stay and pursue a life of Jewish orthodoxy, forcing him to make some
important decisions about the family and life he is leaving in southern California.
Lifton, Betty Jean. I'm still me. A history assignment to explore her roots propels a high school
junior into a search for her biological parents.
Limb, Sue. Girl, 15, charming but insane. Fifteen-year-old Jess, living with her mum,
separated from her father in Cornwall, and with a best friend who seems to do everything
perfectly, finds her own assets through humor.
Lion, Melissa. Upstream. After her boyfriend is killed in a hunting accident, Alaska
high-school-senior Marty, with help from her mother and two younger sisters, tries to get
over her grief and begin a new life.
Lipsyte, Robert. The brave. Sonny left the reservation to become a boxer in New York City. His
success will be limited without necessary training and self-discipline.
---. The contender. After a successful start in a boxing career, a Harlem high school dropout
decides that competing in the ring isn't enough of life and resolves to aim for different
goals.
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Livesey, Margot. Eva moves the furniture. Eva McEwen, whose mother dies in childbirth, is
lovingly raised by her father and aunt. What sets this ordinary tale slightly off kilter is the
presence in Eva's life of two ghosts a girl and a woman whom, she realizes very early on,
only she can see.
Lockhart, E. The boyfriend list: (15 guys, 11 shrink appointments, 4 ceramic frogs and me, Ruby
Oliver). Ruby Oliver, a moderately popular fifteen-year-old who has suddenly become a
social pariah, begins seeing a psychiatrist and makes a list of all her past boyfriends in an
attempt to understand where her life went wrong.
Lockhart, Zelda. Fifth born. Triggered by an accidental meeting with a relative she had not seen
in a long time, long-buried memories resurface to reveal a shocking truth to Odessa about
the
sexual abuse that marked her early family life.
Lowry, Lois. Number the stars. In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old
Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish
friends from the Nazis.
---. The giver. Jonas has been chosen to bear the powerful responsibility of receiving and keeping
all the memories from the past.
Lubar, David. Dunk. Chad, hoping to work out his frustrations and his anger by taking a summer
job as a dunk tank Bozo on the boardwalk at the New Jersey shore, comes to a better
understanding of himself and the uses of humor as he undergoes training in the fine art of
insults.
---. Sleeping freshmen never lie. While navigating his first year of high school and awaiting the
birth of his new baby brother, Scott loses old friends and gains some unlikely new ones as
he hones his skills as a writer.
Lundgren, Mary Beth. Love, Sara. In a series of emails and journal entries Sara, a high school
junior with a history of sexual abuse and foster home care, reveals her feelings about herself
and two friends who are headed for destruction.
Lynch, Chris. Iceman. A disaffected hockey player tries to use the sport's violence to reconcile
his inner turmoil.
---. Shadow boxer. After their father dies of boxing injuries, George is determined to prevent his
younger brother, who sees boxing as his legacy, from pursuing a career in the sport.
---. Whitechurch. Describes the stresses and strains in the triangular relationship of two aimless
teenage boys and a girl living in a small town.
---. Extreme Elvin. As he enters high school, fourteen-year-old Elvin continues to deal with his
weight problem as he tries to find his place among his peers.
---. Freewill. A teenager trying to recover from the tragic death of his father and stepmother
believes himself to be responsible for the rash of teen suicides occurring in his town.
---. Inexcusable. High school senior and football player Keir sets out to enjoy himself on
graduation night, but when he attempts to comfort a friend whose date has left her stranded,
things go terribly wrong.
MacCullough, Carolyn. Stealing Henry. Seventeen-year-old Savannah, fed up with her violent
stepfather, hits him over the head with a frying pan and takes to the road with her eightyear-old half-brother in a journey that echoes in reverse the one her mother Alice took as a
young unwed mother running away from home.
Mackler, Carolyn. Love and other four-letter words. When she and her mother move to an
apartment in New York City after her parents decide on a trial separation, sixteen-year-old
25
Sammie learns to deal with her mother's fragile mental state, her best friend's selfcenteredness, several new friendships, and her own budding sexuality.
Mahy, Margaret. 24 hours. During his first twenty-four hours after finishing high school,
seventeen-year-old Ellis unexpectedly becomes part of an inner-city world far different
from his comfortable life, which helps deal with his best friend's recent suicide.
Manning, Sarra. Guitar girl. Seventeen-year-old Molly Montgomery learns the cost of fame when
her band, The Hormones, a group started with her friends just for fun, suddenly becomes
all the rage.
Marchetta, Melina. Saving Francesca. Sixteen-year-old Francesca could use her outspoken
mother's help with the problems of being one of a handful of girls at a parochial school that
has just turned co-ed, but her mother has suddenly become severely depressed.
Marsden, John. Checkers. Speaking from a mental hospital, a teenage girl recounts the
tremendous media pressure that preceded the breaking scandal of her father's unethical
business dealings.
---. Winter. Sixteen-year-old Winter returns to her family's cattle ranch after twelve years in the
care of unloving relatives in hopes of learning the truth about the
death of her
parents.
Marshall, Catherine. Christy. Nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston leaves her comfortable home
to teach in a one-room schoolhouse in an isolated area of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Martinez, Victor. Parrot in the oven, mi vida : a novel. Manny relates his coming of age
experiences as a member of a poor Mexican American family in which the alcoholic father
only adds to everyone's struggle.
Mason, Bobbie Ann. In country : a novel. Sam Hughes lives in Hopewell, Kentucky with her
Uncle Emmett who is a Vietnam veteran. Sam's father was killed in Vietnam and she wants
to understand about the war, but Emmett and other vets refuse to tell her much.
Mass, Wendy. A mango-shaped space: a novel. Afraid that she is crazy, thirteen-year-old Mia,
who sees a special color with every letter, number, and sound, keeps this a secret until she
becomes overwhelmed by school, changing relationships, and the death of her beloved cat,
Mango.
Mastbaum, Blair. Clay's way. Sam, a bored, frustrated fifteen-year-old Hawaii boy, develops a
dangerously obsessive passion for a troubled seventeen-year-old surfer named Clay.
Matas, Carol. In my enemy's house. When German soldiers arrive in Zloczow during World War
II, a young Jewish girl must decide whether or not to conceal her identity and work for a
Nazi in Germany in order to survive.
Matthews, Tom. Like we care: a novel. Todd Noland and Joel Kasten, two high school seniors fed
up with adult hypocrisy, launch a scheme to disrupt the political and social control of the
recording, cigarette, and junk food industry.
Mayall, Beth. Mermaid Park. Sixteen-year-old Amy escapes family difficulties by immersing
herself in her job at a mermaid-themed water show.
Maynard, Joyce. The cloud chamber. In 1966, when his father's attempted suicide causes the
ostracism of the family in their small Montana community, fourteen-year-old Nate copes
with his sadness and anger by trying to win the school science fair.
Mazer, Harry. When the phone rang. When their parents are killed in an airplane crash, three
siblings try to keep the family together in the face of overwhelming personal and financial
problems.
26
Mazer, Norma Fox. Taking Terri Mueller. Fourteen-year-old Terri remembers only life with her
father, but then she discovers that he kidnapped her from her mother after a divorce and that
her mother is still alive.
---. After the rain. After discovering her grandfather is dying, fifteen-year-old Rachel gets to
know him better than ever before and finds the experience bittersweet.
---. Three sisters. Karen's misplaced romantic feelings for her sister Liz's boyfriend threaten to
alienate Liz, but a disturbing revelation from the third sister in the family promises to bind
them all together again.
---. Girlhearts. Thirteen-year-old Sarabeth Silver's life is turned upside-down when her mother
dies suddenly, leaving her orphaned, confused, and at the mercy of everyone who seems to
know what is best for her.
McBride, James. The color of water: a Black man's tribute to his white mother. An AfricanAmerican male tells of his mother, a white woman, who refused to admit her true identity.
McCafferty, Megan. Sloppy firsts: a novel. Sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling is devastated when
her best friend moves away and leaves Jessica to face the trials of high school on her own.
McCormick, Patricia, 1956-. Cut. While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie
slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually
starts to get better.
McCracken, Elizabeth. The giant's house : a romance. A unique relationship develops between a
boy of unusual height and a librarian who becomes devoted to him in this fascinating novel.
McCullers, Carson. The heart is a lonely hunter. A deaf mute who has lost his only friend to a
hospital for the insane becomes the recipient of the confidences of several other town
residents.
McCunn, Ruthanne Lum. Thousand pieces of gold: a biographical novel. The story of a ChineseAmerican pioneer woman who overcame poverty, foot -binding, and slavery to build a life
of relative freedom in the American Northwest.
McDaniel, Lurlene. When happily ever after ends. Shannon is shocked by her father's violent
suicide. Now she is hurt that her love was not enough to make him want to live. Shannon
and her mother try to make sense of his death and renew their commitment to living in the
face of their loss.
---. Angel of hope. After her older sister Heather, enthusiastic about changing the world, returns
from doing medical missionary work in Uganda, seventeen-year-old Amber feels ignored
and confused about her own future and decides to go back to Africa in Heather's place.
---. Angel of mercy. Eighteen-year-old Heather travels as a volunteer to Africa, where she
provides direly needed medical help in Kenya and Uganda and hopes to act as God's hands
on Earth.
---. Kathleen's story. With the support of her two best friends, sixteen-year-old Kathleen tries to
balance her summer volunteer work at the hospital with her responsibilities caring for her
mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and her attraction to a handsome boy.
---. Raina's story. After sixteen-year-old Raina learns that she is a perfect match for donating
bone marrow to a leukemia patient in Virginia, she discovers that the young woman is the
sister she never knew she had.
McDermott, Alice. Child of my heart. Theresa recalls her fifteenth summer as the most soughtafter babysitter in Long Island, and the challenges of caring for her fragile younger cousin
while crossing over into the world of adulthood.
27
McDonald, Janet. Brother hood. Sixteen-year-old Nate, an academically gifted student who
attends an exclusive private boarding school, straddles two cultures as he returns home for
occasional visits to see his family and "gangsta crew" in Harlem, New York.
McDonald, Joyce. Shadow people. When his family moves to a secluded area in western
New Jersey after his brother is murdered, Gabriel finds himself involved with three other
teenagers, each with his or her own problems, in a series of increasingly violent acts.
---. Shades of Simon Gray. Seventeen-year-old Simon lies in a coma, finding his space and time
overlapping with that of a man who was lynched over 200 years ago, while a member of the
cheating ring he has been helping wonders if their actions have caused the plagues
assaulting their New Jersey town.
McEwan, Ian. Atonement: a novel. Imaginative thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis, misinterpreting a
scene between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son, later
accuses Robbie of a crime she has no proof he committed and spends years trying to atone
for her actions.
McNamee, Graham. Hate you. Nursing hatred for the father who choked her and damaged her
voice as a child, seventeen-year-old Alice writes songs she feels she cannot sing and seeks
to reconcile her feelings for herself and her father.
McNeal, Laura. Zipped. At the end of their sophomore year in high school, the lives of four
teenagers are woven together as they start a tough new job, face family problems, deal with
changing friendships, and find love.
Mechling, Lauren. All Q, no A: more tales of a 10th-grade social climber. Reconciled with her
friends and enjoying life with her father in New York City, fifteen-year-old Mimi hopes for
a happier second term at the progressive Baldwin School but soon finds herself drawn into
complication involving the school's finances, her father's new girlfriend, and her own
romantic
entanglements.
Miklowitz, Gloria D. Close to the edge In spite of having all the advantages money can provide,
high-school senior Jenny sees little point in life until she volunteers to play the piano for a
senior citizens' band and receives the benefit of elderly wisdom.
---. Desperate pursuit Someone is following Nicole and intentionally frightening her. She thinks
it may be her former boyfriend, Michael. Nicole knows he has a darker side and he seems
obsessed with making her his girlfriend again. How far will he carry his desperate pursuit?
---. Past forgiving. Fifteen-year-old Alexandra finds that her boyfriend Cliff demands all her
time, isolates her by his jealousy, and finally becomes physically abusive.
Miller, Mary Beth. Aimee: a novel. Zoe, a high school senior, struggles to survive the aftermath of
the suicide of her best friend Aimee, and her own murder trial for her role in the incident, by
writing about her feelings in a journal.
Mochizuki, Ken. Beacon Hill boys. In 1972 in Seattle, a teenager in a Japanese American family
struggles for his own identity, along with a group of three friends who share his anger and
confusion.
Moore, Lorrie. Who will run the frog hospital? Two teenage girls share a summer that both
shelters and intensifies the bond between them in 1972 in New York.
Moore, Peter. Caught in the act. Everyone believes that sophomore honors student Ethan Lederer
is a top-notch scholar and a great guy, but a new student helps Ethan to discover and
disclose that he is just acting a role, even as she reveals her own mental instability.
28
Morgenroth, Kate. Jude. Still reeling from his drug-dealing father's murder, moving in with the
wealthy mother he never knew, and transferring to a private school, fifteen-year-old Jude is
tricked into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit.
Mori, Kyoko. Shizuko's daughter. After her mother's suicide when she is twelve years old, Yuki
spends years living with her distant father and his resentful new wife, cut off from her
mother's family, and relying on her own inner strength to cope with the tragedy.
Mosier, Elizabeth. My life as a girl. During her last summer in Phoenix, Arizona, before
going to an eastern college, eighteen-year-old Jaime works two waitress jobs and plans her
escape from a life forever changed by her father's prison sentence.
Mowry, Jess. Six out seven. When Corbitt Wainwright's father is imprisoned for attacking a white
man, he leaves Mississippi for Oakland, California where he discovers his African heritage.
---. Way past cool. Story of two street gangs--the Friends and the Crews--in Oakland California.
Murphy, Rita. Looking for Lucy Buick. Following the death of her favorite adoptive aunt,
Lucy goes searching for her biological family who abandoned her in an old Buick eighteen
years before.
Myers, Walter Dean. Crystal Fifteen-year-old Crystal has difficulty trying to reconcile her
personal and school life with the sexy, sophisticated persona her career as a quickly
advancing high-fashion model has forced upon her.
---. Slam! 16-year-old “Slam” Harris can do it all on the basketball court; his grades are another
story, however. He never doubted his abilities on the court until he finds himself one-on-one
with his future.
---. Somewhere in the darkness. A teenage boy accompanies his father, who has recently escaped
from prison, on a trip that turns out to be a time of painful discovery for them both.
---. Shooter. Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three
troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.
---. Monster. While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records
his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to
come to terms with the course his life has taken.
Myracle, Lauren. Rhymes with witches. High school freshman Jane believes that she would do
anything to be popular until she is selected to be in the school's most exclusive clique and
learns that popularity has a price.
Napoli, Donna Jo. For the love of Venice. Spending the summer in Venice with his family turns
confusing for Percy when he meets a beautiful, politically radical Venetian girl who wants
him to help sabotage his father's engineering project in order to drive tourists out of the city.
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Walker's crossing. While living on his family's ranch in Wyoming
where he hopes to someday be a cowboy, Ryan faces conflicts with his older brother who
becomes involved in a militia movement.
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Alice on her way. Alice is adjusting to her new stepmother, her
brother's new apartment, her ex-boyfriend, and getting a driver's license.
Nelson, Blake. Rock star, superstar. When Pete, a talented bass player, moves from playing in the
high school jazz band to playing in a popular rock group, he finds the experience
exhilarating even as his new fame jeopardizes his relationship with girlfriend Margaret.
Neufeld, John. Almost a hero. Twelve-year-old Ben Derby spends his spring break volunteering
at a Santa Barbara day care center for homeless children.
29
---. Lisa, bright and dark: a novel. As her parents and teachers refuse to recognize Lisa's
increasingly severe depression, three of her friends devise a plan to help her with amateur
psychiatry.
Newton, Suzanne. Where are you when I need you? When Missy Cord wins a college
scholarship, she has a hard time deciding whether or not to leave the security of her small
hometown.
Nilsson, Per. You & you & you. Young Anon, who marches to the beat of a different drummer in
galoshes to protect himself from radiation, touches the lives of all around him, resulting in
disillusionment, loss, love, and more than a few surprises.
Nolan, Han. A face in every window. After the death of his grandmother, who held the family
together, teenage JP is left with a mentally challenged father and a mother who seems
ineffectual and constantly sick, and he feels everything sliding out of control.
Nye, Naomi Shihab. Going going. Florrie, a sixteen-year-old living in San Antonio, Texas, leads
her friends and a new boyfriend in a campaign which supports small businesses and protests
the effects of chain stores.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart. This novel “is set in a small
town in western New York from the 1950s to the early 1960s, and follows the ... fortunes of
two families, one white (the Courtneys) and one black (the Fairchilds). When Jinx
Fairchild, at 16, gets in a fight with a white kid who has menaced Iris Courtney, 14, and
ends up killing him,
the secret they share is ... both a bond and a barrier between
the two.” Nation.
---. Big Mouth & Ugly Girl. When sixteen-year-old Matt is falsely accused of threatening to blow
up his high school and his friends turn against him, an unlikely classmate comes to his aid.
---. Foxfire: confessions of a girl gang. During the 1950s, five high school girls in upstate New
York form a gang called Foxfire.
---. Sexy. Sixteen-year-old Darren Flynn, a popular, good-looking high school athlete who lacks
self-confidence, learns that his jock friends are hatching a revenge act against their English
teacher for failing a member of the swim team.
O’Brien, Tim. Going after Cacciato. When Pvt. Cacciato takes off from the Vietnam war to walk
to Paris, his company follows him, beginning an amazing story.
---. If I die in a combat zone: box me up and send me home. “[T]his is the story of O'Brien's
journey from safe, middle class America to the center of the nightmare of the Vietnam War.
O’Brien emphasizes the fear and hardships faced by soldiers fighting the war and wrestles
with the moral issues he faces.”--English Journal
---. The things they carried. A series of connected stories based on the author's experiences in
Vietnam.
Oe, Kenzaburo. The silent cry: a novel. Presents the post-World War II story of two brothers who
return to their country village nestled in a valley and struggle with their own and Japanese
society's response to the war and the loss of its imperial culture.
Okada, John. No-no boy. The story of one Japanese American's psychological struggle for
rehabilitation in postwar America.
Oughton, Jerrie. Perfect family. When Welcome, a fifteen-year-old living in a small town in
North Carolina during the 1950's finds out that she is pregnant, she faces some important
decisions.
Parks, Gordon. The learning tree. A black youth in a small town in Kansas finds himself the only
witness to a murder.
30
Pascal, Francine. The ruling class. Sick of being bullied and harassed, a new girl at a wealthy
suburban Dallas high school plots revenge on the girls in the ruling clique.
Paulsen, Gary. The boy who owned the school: a comedy of love. Jacob Freisten, often in a fog,
tries to ease through high school unnoticed; but a beautiful classmate takes notice of him
and his life begins to change.
Payne, Holly. The sound of blue. Sara Foster, having failed to get into Harvard Law School, signs
on to teach English to upper-class students in Hungary, but is instead redirected to a Balkan
refugee camp where she is persuaded to stay by the residents, including Milan, a composer
who has the ability to hear sound when he sees colors.
Peck, Richard. The last safe place on earth. Fifteen-year-old Todd sees his perfect suburban
world start to unravel when his little sister has her mind poisoned by a member of a
fundamentalist sect and he begins to notice signs of censorship in his community.
---. Remembering the good times. Trav, Kate, and Buck make up a trio during their freshman year
in high school, but their special friendship may not be enough to save Trav as he pressures
himself relentlessly to succeed.
---. Strays like us. When her drug-addict mother can no longer care for her, twelve-year-old Molly
comes to stay with her great-aunt and slowly begins to realize that others in the small town
also feel as if they don't belong.
Peck, Robert Newton. Extra innings. After a tragic airplane crash that claims the lives of most of
his family, sixteen-year-old Tate goes to live with his wealthy great-grandfather and his
adopted black great-aunt Vidalia and he finds unexpected solace in the stories of her
childhood spent traveling with a Depression-era Negro baseball team.
---. Horse thief : a novel. In 1938, with the help of a lady doctor and an aging, card-cheating, dicerolling horse thief, a seventeen-year-old orphan steals thirteen horses from Chickalookee,
Florida's doomed rodeo, and finds a family in the process.
---. Bro: a novel. Young Tug Dockery witnesses a brutal act by his grandfather that leaves him
unable to speak, so when his parents die, Tug's beloved older brother feels compelled to
escape from a hellish labor camp to rescue him from their grandfather's Florida cattle ranch.
Peña, Matt de la. Ball don't lie. Seventeen-year-old Sticky lives to play basketball at school
and at Lincoln Rec Center in Los Angeles and is headed for the pros, but he is unaware of
the many dangers--including his own past--that threaten his dream.
Pennebaker, Ruth. Don't think twice. Seventeen years old and pregnant, Anne lives with other
unwed mothers in a group home in rural Texas where she learns to be herself before giving
her child up for adoption.
---. Conditions of love. During her freshman year at an elite high school in Dallas, Sarah tries to
come to terms with her own volatile emotions, her changing relationship with her best
friend, feelings about her mother, and new insights into her dead father whom she idolized.
---. Both sides now. Fifteen-year-old Liza tries to deal with the normal everyday crises of life in
an Austin, Texas, high school, a process complicated by her mother's fight with breast
cancer.
Perkins, Lynne Rae. Criss cross. Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts
and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the
meaning of life and love.
Perkins, Mitali. Monsoon summer. Secretly in love with her best friend and business
partner Steve, fifteen-year-old Jazz must spend the summer away from him when her family
goes to India during that country's rainy season to help set up a clinic.
31
Peters, Julie Anne. Keeping you a secret : a novel. As she begins a very tough last semester of
high school, Holland finds herself puzzled about her future and intrigued by a transfer
student who wants to start a lesbigay club at school.
Petersen, P. J. Rob&sara.com. Rob, who lives at a school for troubled teenagers, and Sara, the
sixteen-year-old daughter of an army colonel, meet in a poetry chat-room and develop a
close relationship via E-mail.
Picoult, Jodi. The pact: a love story. The Hartes and the Golds, longtime neighbors and friends,
are not surprised when their children Chris and Emily fall in love, but the bond between the
families is placed under an enormous strain when Emily is killed, leaving behind the
question of whether her death was a suicide, or murder.
---. The tenth circle. Comic book artist Daniel Stone, a stay-at-home dad with a fourteen-year-old
daughter Trixie, and an unfaithful wife, turns a blind eye to Trixie's first broken heart and
wife Laura's affair, but the feelings of rage he has buried for years come to the surface when
Trixie is raped at a party and accuses her former boyfriend.
Piercy, Marge. Woman on the edge of time. Connie Ramos, a Chicana woman in her midthirties, living in New York and labeled insane, committed to a mental institution, is able to
communicate with the year 2137.
Pietrzyk, Leslie. A year and a day. Alice, a 15-year-old in small-town Iowa is coping with the
pains of adolescence, but with a dramatic twist: her mother has just killed
herself.
But Alice, in her grief, has regular conversations with her and soon discovers long-buried
family secrets--and her mother's own hidden desires.
Plath, Sylvia. The bell jar. The mental breakdown of a brilliant, beautiful, talented and successful
young woman is chronicled in this novel set during the 1950s in New York. The novel is
somewhat autobiographical because Plath committed suicide a month after the publication
of this book.
Platt, Randall Beth. The likes of me. In 1918, having run away from the Washington State lumber
camp she calls home, a fourteen-year-old half-Chinese albino named Cordy makes her way
to Seattle and finds work in a carnival.
Plum-Ucci, Carol. The body of Christopher Creed. Torey Adams, a high school junior with a
seemingly perfect life, struggles with doubts and questions surrounding the mysterious
disappearance of the class outcast.
Potok, Chaim. My name is Asher Lev. Young Asher Lev is sent to a Hasidic religious leader for
consultation when his artistic endeavors are discovered.
---. Zebra and other stories. A collection of stories about six different young people who each
experience a life-changing event.
---. The chosen. Two Jewish boys, one Hasidic, the other Orthodox, discover a way to enable the
Hasidic boy's father to communicate with him.
Poupeney, Mollie. Her father's daughter. During the Depression era of the 1930s Maggie
grows up in logging camps and small towns of Oregon while living in the midst of a
troubled family with an abusive father.
Qualey, Marsha. One night. Nineteen-year-old Kelly, ex-addict niece of a nationally-renowned
Minnesota talk show host, has an unexpected adventure with the visiting prince of a wartorn Eastern European country.
---. Just like that. A tragic accident ending with the death of two people her own age changes life
forever for an eighteen-year-old woman.
32
Rand, Ayn. Anthem. In a future world, only one man dares to think, strive, and love as an
individual in the midst of a paralyzing collective humanity.
Randle, Kristen D. Breaking rank. Seventeen-year-old Casey has some of her preconceived
notions challenged when she begins to tutor Baby, a member of a gang like non-conformist
society called the Clan.
Reading, J. P. The summer of Sassy Jo. Almost fourteen, Sara Jo tries to cope with her conflicting
emotions when she goes to spend the summer with her mother, a reformed alcoholic who
abandoned her when she was little.
Rennison, Louise. Dancing in my nuddy-pants: even further confessions of Georgia Nicolson.
An English teenager tries to decide whether her musician boyfriend Robbie, whom
she may get the chance to accompany on tour, is her one and only, or if her ex, Dave the
Laugh, could fill his shoes.
Revoyr, Nina. The necessary hunger: a novel. Step-sisters and rival athletes Nancy and Raina
form a supportive bond as together they combat racism, experience self-discovery, and
awaken to their first feelings of love.
Reynolds, Marilyn. But what about me? Erica has always been a serious student but when her
boyfriend's life starts spinning out of control, she does not anticipate the tragic
consequences his behavior could have on her future.
---. Love rules. Seventeen-year-old Lynn experiences surprise, discomfort, and a new awareness of
prejudices and stereotyping when her best friend Kit comes out as a lesbian.
---. If you loved me. Racially mixed seventeen-year-old Lauren, the daughter of drug users, is
pressured to have sex with her boyfriend and questions her promise to herself to stay a
virgin until she is married.
Reynolds, Sheri. Bitterroot Landing. The story of Jael, a young southern woman, who was
born into a hard life, but survives with help from a priest and a special young man.
Roberts, Laura Peyton. The queen of second place. Smitten with a new boy at school, California
high school sophomore Cassie Howard spends months trying desperately to win him over
before she finally regains some perspective.
Roberts, Willo Davis. Blood on his hands. After the death of his little sister, Marc's life begins to
fall apart--his parents divorce, his mother comes under the influence of a pushy insurance
agent, and Marc is sent to a camp for socially maladjusted youths.
Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping. Ruth and her sister Lucille are cared for by Sylvie, the
transient sister of their dead mother. They attempt to keep house as the forces of nature
erode their stronghold.
Rosoff, Meg. How I live now. To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City,
fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she
instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the
land.
Rosten, Carrie. Chloe Leiberman (sometimes Wong). Chloe, an aspiring fashion designer,
dreams of going to design school in London, but first has to tell her parents that she does
not plan to go to college.
Rottman, S. L. Hero. After years of abuse from his mother and neglect from his father, ninthgrader Sean Parker is headed for trouble when he is sent to do community service at a farm
owned by an old man who teaches Sean that he can take control of his own life.
Rottman, S. L. Stetson. Seventeen-year-old Stetson meets the sister he never knew he had, and
together they try to make sense of their pasts.
33
Rubio, Gwyn Hyman. Icy Sparks. Icy Sparks has spent most of her life being ridiculed because
she suffers from Tourette Syndrome, but as she grows older, she teaches the people in her
town how to accept people for who they are, not what they appear to be.
Ryan, Amy Kathleen. Shadowfalls. After the death of her beloved older brother, fifteen-year-old
Anna is forced to spend the summer with her grandfather in Wyoming, where she babysits
for a traumatized young boy, learns secrets of her grandfather's past, and encounters a
grizzly bear who seems strangely familiar.
Ryan, Sara. Empress of the world. While attending a summer institute, fifteen-year-old Nic
meets another girl named Battle, falls in love with her, and finds the relationship to be
difficult and confusing.
Sachar, Louis. Holes. As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a
curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the
Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
Sáenz, Benjamin Alire. Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood. Sammy Santos and Juliana Rios live
amongst the racism, discrimination, and everyday violence during the Vietnam years of the
1960s in a small town in Southern New Mexico.
Salinger, J. D. Franny, and Zooey. Franny, dissatisfied with everything, has a disastrous date with
her boyfriend Lane. When she returns home her older brother helps her solve her problem.
---. The catcher in the rye. Story of an alienated, disillusioned youth who drops out of school, and
spends three days and nights in New York City on a quest for self-discovery.
Sanchez, Alex. Rainbow High. Gay friends Nelson, Kyle, and Jason, nearing the end of their high
school days, struggle with issues of coming out, safe sex, homophobia, being in love, and
college choices.
---. Rainbow boys. Three high school seniors,a jock with a girlfriend and an alcoholic father, a
closeted gay, and a flamboyant gay rights advocate, struggle with family issues, gay
bashers, first sex, and conflicting feelings about each other.
Sanders, Dori. Clover. After her father dies within hours of being married to a white woman, a
ten-year-old black girl learns with her new mother to overcome grief and to adjust to a new
place in their rural black South Carolina community.
Sapphire. Push: a novel. Precious Jones, a sixteen-year-old girl who is pregnant with her second
child by her father, is pushed by her courageous African-American teacher to learn to read,
and discovers the truth about herself and her life.
Sarris, Greg. Watermelon nights. Johnny Severe, a Pomo Indian living with his grandmother,
Elba, in California, learns a lesson about the ties that bind a family together when he
contemplates leaving his home for the big city.
Savage, Deborah. Summer hawk. When her rescue of a baby hawk takes fifteen-year-old Taylor
to a raptor rehabilitation center in rural Pennsylvania, their offer of a summer public
relations job seems a step toward her dream of becoming a journalist.
---. Kotuku. Still having difficulty facing the death of her best friend, Wim must deal with a
difficult great-aunt and Maori visitors from New Zealand who uncover a dark family secret.
Sebold, Alice. The lovely bones. Told from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old murder
victim, this novel explores what happens to the people she left behind as a result of her
death.
Selvadurai, Shyam. Funny boy. A young boy comes of age in a Sri Lanka family while coming to
terms with his own gay self-image.
34
Shea, Suzanne Strempek. Hoopi shoopi Donna. A young Polish-American girl has dreams
of having her own all woman polka band.
Shreve, Susan Richards. Under the Watson's porch. Twelve-year-old Ellie's boring summer
becomes exciting when she develops a crush on her new next-door neighbor, an older boy
with a troubled past, whom her parents have forbidden her to see.
Shulman, Irving. West Side story. “A novelization of the Broadway musical ‘West Side Story’
based on a conception of Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard
Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, entire original production directed and
choreographed by Jerome Robbins.” Maria, a young Puerto Rican girl living in New York,
and sister to Sharks gang leader Bernardo, falls in love with Tony, former leader of the rival
gang, the Jets, setting the stage for tragedy.
Shusterman, Neal. What daddy did A twelve-year-old living with his grandparents learns his
father is to be released from prison after killing his mother and feels apprehensive about
renewing the relationship.
---. The Shadow Club rising. Even though he has disbanded his Shadow Club, formed to play
mean-spirited tricks on his enemies, fourteen-year-old Jared finds himself suspected when a
popular boy at school becomes the target of new pranks.
---. The Schwa was here. A Brooklyn eighth-grader nicknamed Antsy befriends the Schwa, an
“invisible-ish” boy who is tired of blending into his surroundings and going unnoticed by
nearly everyone.
Sillitoe, Alan. The loneliness of the long-distance runner. A Borstal boy and his audacious
companions are fresh from reform school and ready to take on the world. Members of the
British lower class, they are out to beat the system anyway they can.
Sinclair, April. Coffee will make you black. The story of an African-American woman growing
up on the south side of Chicago during the turbulent 1960s as she tests the limits of racism.
Singer, Marilyn. Storm rising. Seventeen-year-old Storm, lonely, lost, and going nowhere,
is drawn to a gentle older woman who possesses unusual powers, and as love develops
between them, Storm experiences the beginnings of confidence, suffering, and a promise of
a new start to his life.
Skurzynski, Gloria. Rockbuster. In 1915, after being asked to sing at the funeral of executed
songwriter and member of the international union, Industrial Workers of the World, Joe
Hill, eighteen-year-old Utah coal miner Tommy Quinlan begins to accept his past and make
decisions about his future.
Slade, Arthur G. Wendy. For Percy, the loss of his father and the suicide of his best friend build to
a head during the last week before high school graduation.
Smith, Sherri L. Lucy the giant. Fifteen-year-old Lucy, the largest girl in her school,
leaves her small Alaska town and her alcoholic father and discovers hardship--and
friendship--posing as an adult aboard a commercial fishing boat.
Snyder, Anne. My name is Davy--I'm an alcoholic. A fifteen-year-old won't believe that he is an
alcoholic until personal tragedy forces him to face reality.
Soehnlein, K. M. The world of normal boys. Living in suburban New Jersey in the 1970s is quiet
for Robin until his brother is killed in an accident, causing the relationship with his family
to deteriorate as he rebels against his middle-American lifestyle.
Sones, Sonya. What my mother doesn't know. Sophie describes her relationships with a
series of boys as she searches for Mr. Right.
35
Soto, Gary. Buried onions. Mexican American Eddie tries desperately to escape his violenceinfested life in Fresno, California.
---. Baseball in April and other stories. A collection eleven short stories focusing on the everyday
adventures of Hispanic young people growing up in Fresno, California.
Sparks, Beatrice. Jay's journal. The story of Jay, a sixteen-year-old boy, describing his descent
into drugs, Satanism, and suicide.
Spiegler, Louise. The amethyst road. Having fled the city of Oestia after attacking an official,
sixteen-year-old Serena--an outcast as well as a mixed-race child of a Gorgio father and
Yulang mother--seeks to reunite her family and regain her honor.
Spinelli, Jerry. Stargirl. In this story about the perils of popularity, the courage of
nonconformity, and the thrill of first love, an eccentric student named Stargirl changes Mica
High School forever.
Springer, Nancy. Skyrider. Dealing with her mother's death, a back injury that prevents
her from riding, and the imminent destruction of her sick horse, fourteen-year-old Dusty
receives physical and spiritual healing from the ghost of a recently killed boy.
Stahler, David. Truesight. In a distant frontier world, thirteen-year-old Jacob is uncertain of his
future in a community that considers blindness a virtue and "Seers" as aberrations.
Staples, Suzanne Fisher. Shabanu : daughter of the wind. Eleven-year old Shabanu, the daughter
of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an
older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, and must either accept the
decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father's wishes.
---. Haveli. Having relented to the ways of her people in Pakistan and married the rich older man
to whom she was pledged against her will, Shabanu is now the victim of his family's blood
feud and the malice of his other wives.
Stein, Tammar. Light years. Maya Laor leaves her home in Israel to study astronomy at the
University of Virginia after the tragic death of her boyfriend in a suicide bombing.
Steinhöfel, Andreas. The center of the world. Phil, living in a small, provincial German town,
works through his often difficult relationships with his single mother, his distant twin sister,
his first boyfriend, as an odd assortment of friends help him learn about the wounds and
healing brought by love.
Stine, Catherine. Refugees. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dawn, a
sixteen-year-old runaway from San Francisco, connects by phone and email with Johar, a
gentle, fifteen-year-old Afghani who assists Dawn's foster mother, a doctor, at a Red Cross
refugee camp in Peshawar.
Stolz, Karen. World of pies : a novel. Follows the life of a young girl growing up in a small Texas
town, from crushes and fingernail polish to new baby sisters and the deaths of those closest
to her.
Strasser, Todd. Give a boy a gun. Gary and Brendan hold their classmates hostage at a dance with
rifles stolen from a neighbor.
---. The wave. Presents a fictionalization of a real experiment at a California high school in which
a history teacher started a fascist youth movement in an effort to show his students that the
Holocaust could indeed happen again.
Strout, Elizabeth. Amy and Isabelle. Isabelle Goodrow, horrified and enraged when she discovers
her teenage daughter Amy is involved with a math teacher at the high school, comes to
realize that her outrage is mostly the result of the secret she has been keeping for most of
Amy's life.
36
Swarthout, Glendon Fred. Bless the beasts & children. Six adolescent boys living in a camp in
Arizona run away into the desert and learn much about themselves and the world.
Taylor, Mildred D. Roll of thunder, hear my cry. A black family living in the South during the
1930s are faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand.
Taylor, Theodore. The bomb. In 1945, when the American forces take the Bikini Atoll from the
occupying Japanese, Sorry Rinamu does not realize that the next year he will lead a
desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat.
Thayer, Nancy. An act of love. Linda and Owen McFarland, married for seven happy years, are
forced to reevaluate their commitment to one another when Linda's teenage daughter
accuses Owen's son of rape.
Thesman, Jean. The moonstones. While helping her mother clean out the family home in Puget
Sound, fifteen-year-old Jane must deal with her hateful aunt and difficult cousin Ricki, and
secrets from her mother's past.
Thompson, Julian F. Brothers. When his idolized older brother leaves college for a mental
health facility and then disappears, seventeen-year-old Chris follows him to the compound
of an anti-government militia group and tries to rescue him.
Thurman, Wallace. The blacker the berry. Emma Lou Brown, a victim of prejudice inside and
outside the African-American community because of her very dark skin, moves from her
home in Idaho to New York's Harlem in the 1920s, hoping to find acceptance.
Tolan, Stephanie S. Plague year. Sixteen-year-old David becomes intimately involved when a
scandal is discovered about the strange new boy in his high school and everyone else turns
against him.
Tomey, Ingrid. Nobody else has to know. Fifteen-year-old Webber must either live with guilt or
tell the truth about who was driving his grandfather's car when it struck and seriously
injured a little girl.
Touré. Soul city. Journalist Cadillac Jackson is sent on assignment to Soul City in the midst of a
mayoral election where the only issue is which candidate will make the best DJ, falls in love
with Mahogany Sunflower, and discovers the worth of his own identity.
Townsend, Sue. Adrian Mole diaries. Incorporates into one volume the author's separately
published works, The secret diary of Adrian Mole, and the Growing pains of Adrian Mole.
---. The secret diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4. The memoir of a British teenager named
Adrian Mole.
---. The growing pains of Adrian Mole. The continuing memoirs of a British teenager named
Adrian Mole.
Triana, Gaby. Backstage pass. After moving to Miami, Florida, sixteen-year-old Desert McGraw,
whose life as the daughter of a rock star has been anything but normal, determines to make
a permanent home for herself and her family--even if it means breaking up the band.
---. Cubanita. Seventeen-year-old Isabel, eager to leave Miami to attend the University of
Michigan and escape her overprotective Cuban mother, learns some truths about her
family's past and makes important decisions about the type of person she wants to be.
Trice, Dawn Turner. Only twice I've wished for heaven. Relates the experiences of a variety of
African-Americans some wealthy and some poor living in Chicago discussing their
adventures, hopes, and fears.
Trueman, Terry. Stuck in neutral. Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from severe
cerebral palsy and cannot function, relates his perceptions of his life, his family, and his
condition, especially as he believes his father is planning to kill him.
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---. Cruise control. A talented basketball player struggles to deal with the helplessness and anger
that come with having a brother rendered completely dysfunctional by severe cerebral palsy
and a father who deserted the family
Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny got his gun. The story of a badly mutilated, blind and deaf man who
fights to communicate with an uncomprehending medical world debating his fate.
Tyler, Anne. Saint maybe. In 1965 the Bedloe family lives on a quiet street in Baltimore.
Seventeen-year-old Ian has dreams for the future, until the night when he meddles in his
older brother's life--and from that careless moment on, nothing can ever be the same.
Tyree, Omar. Flyy girl. Tracy is sixteen and obsessed with collecting designer clothes, jewelry,
and boys while her best friend Raheema struggles to follow a different path by focusing on
grades and achievement which challenges Tracy to reexamine her life and goals.
Vail, Rachel. If we kiss. Fourteen-year-old Charlie feels guilty because she has a crush on her best
friend's boyfriend, and her loyalties become even more confused when she discovers that
her mother is dating the boyfriend's father.
Van Draanen, Wendelin. Flipped. In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how
their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years.
Vande Velde, Vivian. Alison, who went away. Three years after the disappearance of her
older sister, fourteen-year-old Sibyl and her family struggle to continue their lives,
separately and together.
Villarreal, José Antonio. Pocho. During the Depression-era in California, Richard, a young
Mexican American, experiences a conflict between loyalty to the traditions of his family's
past and attraction to new ideas.
Vizzini, Ned It's kind of a funny story. A humorous account of a New York City teenager's battle
with depression and his time spent in a psychiatric hospital.
---. Teen angst? naaah-- : a quasi-autobiography. A collection of essays written by the author
from age fifteen to seventeen in which he shares impressions of school, sports, cool people,
boring people, friends, family, money, music, and obsessions.
---. Be more chill. Badly in need of self-confidence and a change of image, high school nerd
Jeremy Heere swallows a pill-sized super computer that is supposed to help him get
whatever he wants.
Voigt, Cynthia. Homecoming. Abandoned in a parking lot by their mother, who left them
with a bag of sandwiches and the address of a distant great-aunt, Dicey, James, Maybeth,
and Sammy Tillerman embark on an arduous and eventful journey. Regent Books.
---. The runner. As a dedicated runner, a teenage boy has always managed to distance himself
from other people until the experience of coaching one of his teammates on the track team
gradually helps him see the value of giving and receiving.
---. Orfe. Enny tells of her relationship with Orfe, an unusually talented musician, and of the love
between Orfe and Yuri, a recovering addict.
---. Dicey's song. Now that the four abandoned Tillerman children are settled in with their
grandmother, Dicey finds that their new beginnings require love, trust, humor, and courage.
---. Izzy, willy-nilly. A car accident causes fifteen-year-old Izzy to lose one leg and face the need
to start building a new life as an amputee.
Volponi, Paul. Black and white. Two star high school basketball players, one black and one
white, experience the justice system differently after committing a crime together and
getting caught.
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Wagner, Robin S. Sarah T. : portrait of a teen-age alcoholic. A teenage girl turns to Alcoholics
Anonymous for help when she is struggling to accept the fact that she is an alcoholic and to
overcome the problem that has turned her life into a nightmare.
Walker, Alice. The color purple. Tells the story of two sisters: Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and
Celie, a child-wife living in the South, in the medium of their letters to each other and in
Celie's case, the desperate letters she begins, "Dear God."
Walker, Mary Alexander. Year of the cafeteria. Moving from Louisiana to California in her
senior year is a difficult enough transition for Azure, but she must also work in the school
cafeteria run by her strong-willed grandmother.
Wallace, Kim. Erik & Isabelle: freshman year at Foresthill High. Follows two gay and lesbian
teenagers, who are best friends, through their freshman year of high school.
---. Erik & Isabelle: sophomore year at Foresthill High. Follows two gay and lesbian teenagers,
who are best friends, through their sophomore year of high school.
Wallace, Rich. Wrestling Sturbridge. Stuck in a small town where no one ever leaves and
relegated by his wrestling coach to sit on the bench while his best friend becomes state
champion, Ben decides he can't let his last high school wrestling season slip by without
challenging his friend and the future.
---. Playing without the ball: a novel in four quarters. Feeling abandoned by his parents, who
have gone their separate ways and left him behind in a small Pennsylvania town, seventeenyear-old Jay finds hope for the future in a church-sponsored basketball team and a female
friend.
---. Losing is not an option: stories. Eleven episodes in the life of a young man, from sneaking
into his tenth football game in a row with his best friend in sixth grade to running his last
high school race, the Pennsylvania state championships.
Warren, Patricia Nell. The front runner. Harlan Brown, a top track coach, is torn between his
feelings for Billy Sive, a talented gay runner, and his desire to help Sive make the Olympic
team.
Watson, Larry. Montana, 1948. David's life is changed forever when his Uncle Frank is accused
of sexual abuse and possibly murder, and his father, the sheriff, must deal with the
consequences.
White, Robb. Deathwatch. Needing money for school, a college boy accepts a job as guide on a
desert hunting trip and nearly loses his life.
Whitney, Kim Ablon. The perfect distance.. While competing in the three junior national
equitation championships, seventeen-year-old Francie Martinez learns to believe in herself
and makes some decisions about the type of person she wants to be.
Whyman, Matt. Boy kills man.Two thirteen-year-old boys, blood brothers and best friends, get
drawn into a dangerous, violent world on the streets of a troubled Columbian city.
Williams-Garcia, Rita. Every time a rainbow dies. After seeing a girl raped and becoming
obsessed with her, sixteen-year-old Thulani finds motivation to move beyond his interest in
his pigeons and his grief over his mother's death.
Williams, John Alden. The man who cried I am. The recollections of a dying black author living
in the U.S. and Europe.
Williams, Joy. The quick and the dead. The life and death adventures of three misfit teenagers in
the American desert.
Williams, Lori Aurelia. When Kambia Elaine flew in from Neptune. Shayla Dubois, an aspiring
writer growing up in a poor section of Houston, is mystified by the fantastic stories told to
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her by new neighbor Kambia Elaine, but she soon comes to realize that the girl is in trouble,
yet she cannot get past the stories to the truth.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges are not the only fruit. Jeanette, a rebellious orphan who is adopted
into an evangelical household, has trouble coming to terms with her unorthodox sexuality
and non-traditional religious beliefs.
Wittlinger, Ellen. Hard love. After starting to publish a ‘zine in which he writes his secret
feelings about his lonely life and his parents’ divorce, sixteen-year-old John meets an
unusual girl and begins to develop a healthier pesonality.
---. Razzle. When his retired parents buy a group of tourist cabins on Cape Cod, fifteen-year-old
Kenyon Baker's days are filled with repair work until he becomes friends with an eccentric
girl and makes her the subject of a series of photographs.
---. What's in a name. Each of ten teenagers living in Scrub Harbor, Massachusetts, explores his
or her identity at the same time that the local residents consider changing the name of their
town.
---. Heart on my sleeve. From the end of high school to the beginning of college, Chloe and Julian
deal with major changes in their families and friendships and explore their feelings for each
other through emails, letters, and a visit.
Wolff, Tobias. Old school. A young man at a prestigious, literary New England preparatory
school who has spent his entire time there hiding his real self in order to fit in finds his
facade and his world falling apart during his senior year.
Wolff, Virginia Euwer. Make lemonade. In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old
LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.
---. True believer. Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn
learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an
occasion to rise to.
Wolitzer, Meg. Caribou. Becca's older brother Stevie, selected for the draft during the Vietnamese
War, decides to go to Canada instead, leaving his family upset and divided by his refusal to
fight.
Woods, Brenda. Emako Blue. Monterey, Savannah, Jamal, and Eddie have never had much to do
with each other until Emako Blue shows up at chorus practice, but just as the lives of the
five Los Angeles high school students become intertwined, tragedy tears them apart.
Woodson, Jacqueline. The house you pass on the way. When fourteen-year-old Staggerlee,
the daughter of a racially mixed marriage, spends a summer with her cousin Trout, she
begins to question her sexuality to Trout and catches a glimpse of her possible future self.
---. From the notebooks of Melanin Sun. Thirteen-year-old Melanin Sun’s comfortable, quiet life
is shattered when his mother reveals she has fallen in love with a woman.
---. Miracle's boys. Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close relationship with his older brother Charlie
changes after Charlie is released from a detention home and blames Lafayette for the death
of their mother.
---. Maizon at Blue Hill. After winning a scholarship to an academically challenging boarding
school, Maizon finds herself one of only five black students there and wonders if she will
ever fit in.
---. Behind you. After fifteen-year-old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by police, the people who love
him struggle to cope with their loss as they recall his life and death, unaware that 'Miah is
watching over them.
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Wright, Camron Steve. Letters for Emily. Harry Whitney writes poems to his granddaughter,
Emily, as he lays dying from Alzheimer's disease in hopes his words might heal the tenuous
relationships in a family that is falling apart.
Wright, Richard. Native son. “Bigger Thomas is black. He is driven by anger, hate, and
frustration, which are born out of the poverty that has dominated his life. When he gets a
job with the Daltons, a white family, he is confused by their behavior and misinterprets their
patronizing friendship. Tragedy follows when he accidentaly kills Mary Dalton.”
---. Rite of passage. When fifteen-year-old Johnny Gibbs is told that he is really a foster child, he
runs off into the streets of Harlem and meets up with a gang that wants him to participate in
a mugging.
Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac nation : young and depressed in America.The author describes her
battle with depression, including her breakdowns, suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and
experiences with medications, and also discusses her feelings about depression in 1990s
America.
Wynne-Jones, Tim. Stephen Fair. At the age of fifteen Stephen begins having nightmares like
the ones that drove his older brother away from home, and eventually the dreams lead to a
discovery that is shocking but that ultimately allows his family to come back together.
Wyss, Thelma Hatch. Ten miles from Winnemucca. When his mother and her new husband take
off on a long honeymoon and his new stepbrother throws his belongings out the window,
sixteen-year-old Martin J. Miller takes off in his Jeep and settles in Red Rock, Idaho, where
he finds a job, enrolls in school, and suffers from loneliness.
Yablonsky, Linda. The story of junk. A fictional account of a New York addict who tells the story
of her life taking and dealing drugs.
Yang, Gene. American born Chinese. Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of
young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic
book format.
Yolen, Jane. Armageddon summer. Fourteen-year-old Marina and sixteen-year-old Jed
accompany their parents' religious cult, the Believers,to await the end of the world atop a
remote mountain, where they try to decide what they themselves believe.
Young, Karen Romano. The Beetle and me : a love story. Surrounded by her extended family,
fifteen-year-old Daisy pursues her goal of restoring the car of her dreams, the old purple
Volkswagen Beetle from her childhood.
Yumoto, Kazumi. The spring tone. Plagued by headaches and nightmares, Tomomi tries to make
sense of her grandmother's death, her little brother's obsession with saving sick and
abandoned cats, and her fear that she is becoming a monster.
Zeises, Lara M. Bringing up the bones. Bridget Edelstein mourns the loss of her high
school boyfriend who died in a car crash, and rebounds with a new love.
Zindel, Bonnie. Star for the latecomer. A young girl desperately tries to become a star before
tragedy strikes.
Zindel, Paul. Pardon me, you're stepping on my eyeball!. Two alienated teenagers learn to cope
with their personal problems by being honest with each other.
---. The undertaker's gone bananas. Two teenagers believe a neighbor, an undertaker, has
murdered his wife but can't convince anyone else.
---. The pigman. Two high school sophomores from unhappy homes form a close friendship with
a lonely old man who has a terrible secret.
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Zusak, Markus. I am the messenger. After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver
Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where
people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness.
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