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🧲 Books like this

Under the Hawthorn Tree

Marita Conlon-McKenna · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Nory Ryan's Song

Patricia Reilly Giff · 148 pages

Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the

IrelandSurvival StoryMiddle GradeEmotional
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Artemis Fowl

Eoin Colfer · 288 pages

Artemis Fowl is the first of a series of semi-realist novels produced by Eoin Colfer. They document the adventures of a precocious prodigal child of the criminal empire, Artemis Fowl. In this book, accompanied by his huge and loyal bodyguard/sidekick/advisor Butler, Artemis engages in a series of surreal activities; the absence of his missing father and the mental disorder of his mother allow him

IrelandAbsent ParentMiddle GradeSeries Starter
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Homecoming

Cynthia Voigt · 334 pages

The iconic start to the timeless, Newbery-winning series from Cynthia Voigt. “It’s still true.” That’s the first thing James Tillerman says to his older sister, Dicey, every morning. It’s still true that their mother has abandoned the four Tillermans in a mall parking lot somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. It’s still true that they have to find their own way to Great-aunt Cilla’s house in

Survival StoryAbsent ParentEmotionalMiddle Grade
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Small as an Elephant

Jennifer Richard Jacobson · 281 pages

Abandoned by his mother in an Acadia National Park campground, Jack tries to make his way back to Boston before anyone figures out what is going on, with only a small toy elephant for company. Abandoned by his mother in an Acadia National Park campground, eleven-year-old Jack tries to make his way back to Boston before anyone figures out what is going on, with only a small toy elephant for compan

Survival StoryAbsent ParentMiddle GradeOrphans
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The Escape from Home

Avi · 314 pages

Maura O'Connell, 15, and her brother, Patrick, 12, escape Ireland's brutal poverty with only the belongings in their bundles and tickets for ocean passage. Sir Laurence Kirkle, 11, flees a life of privilege to seek justice. When fate brings them ogether, the three join forces in a daring scheme that may lead to freedom and glory...or dire consequences.

IrelandSurvival StoryMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Wolf Brother

Michelle Paver · 320 pages

This exciting fast-paced novel is an engaging depiction of a young boy's life during Neolithic times. This fictional account includes details based on archeological evidence of tool use, clothing, and other details of everyday life during the Stone Age. The main character loses his father in a 'demonic' animal attack, so is left alone to face the harsh realities of survival without the benefit o

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeSeries Starter
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Children on the Oregon Trail

An Rutgers van der Loeff · 208 pages

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeEmotional
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Escape From Warsaw

Ian Serraillier · 192 pages

In 1942 Warsaw, World War II is raging, and people live in fear from day to day. Ruth, Bronia, and Edek have to fend for themselves when both of their parents are taken by the Nazis. Can they survive? A gripping story based on true accounts. This was also published as "Escape from Warsaw"

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeEmotional
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Making Bombs for Hitler

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeEmotional
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Go Saddle the Sea

Joan Aiken · 357 pages

In 1821, an orphaned twelve-year-old boy runs away from his unhappy home in Spain to England where he tries to find his father's family.

Absent ParentOrphansMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Run, Boy, Run

Uri Orlev · 192 pages

Survival StoryOrphansEmotionalHistorical Fiction
❤️

Canada

Richard Ford · 420 pages

After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.

Absent ParentOrphansSurvival StoryEmotional
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So Far From Home: the Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1847

Barry Denenberg · 170 pages

In the diary account of her journey from Ireland in 1847 and of her work in a mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, fourteen-year-old Mary reveals a great longing for her family.

IrelandMiddle GradeSurvival StoryEmotional
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The Hunger: The Diary of Phyllis McCormack, Ireland, 1845-1847

Carol Drinkwater · 208 pages

It's 1845 and blight has destroyed the precious potato crop leaving Ireland starving. Phyllis works hard to support her struggling family, but when her mother's health deteriorates she sets off in search of her rebel brother and is soon swept up in thefight for a free and fair Ireland.

IrelandSurvival StoryMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Runaway

Wendelin Van Draanen · 256 pages

"It's a cold, hard, cruel fact that my mother loved heroin more than she loved me."Holly is in her fifth foster home in two years and she's had enough. She's run away before and always been caught quickly. But she's older and wiser now--she's twelve--and this time she gets away clean.Through tough and tender and angry and funny journal entries, Holly spills out her story. We travel with her across

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeEmotional
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The Four Winds

Kristin Hannah · 472 pages

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is

Survival StoryAbsent ParentHistorical FictionEmotional
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The Convicts

Iain Lawrence · 198 pages

After seeing his father hauled off to debtor's prison, Tom Tin sets out to take revenge on Mr. Goodfellow, the man responsible for his family's misfortunes. But the fog-filled London streets are teeming with sinister characters. Tom encounters a blind man who scavenges the riverbed for treasure--and wants what Tom digs up; Worms, a body snatcher who reveals a shocking surprise; and a nasty gang of

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Once

Morris Gleitzman · 156 pages

Once by Morris Gleitzman is the story of a young Jewish boy who is determined to escape the orphanage he lives in to save his Jewish parents from the Nazis in the occupied Poland of the Second World War. Everybody deserves to have something good in their life. At least Once. Once I escaped from am orphanage to find Mum and Dad. Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house. Onc

OrphansMiddle GradeHistorical FictionEmotional
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Knights of the Borrowed Dark

Dave Rudden · 388 pages

A young orphan learns that monsters can grow out of the shadows in our world, and there is an ancient order of knights who keep them at bay.

IrelandOrphansMiddle GradeSeries Starter
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Gregor the Overlander

Suzanne Collins · 311 pages

Absent ParentSurvival StoryMiddle GradeSeries Starter
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Raiders from the Sea

Lois Walfrid Johnson · 199 pages

When Briana O’Toole rescues a stranger from drowning, she doesn’t realize that her actions may have put her family and neighbors in danger. Then, in one harrowing day, Viking raiders capture Bree and her brother Devin and take them away from their home in Ireland. All of the Irish prisoners are at the mercy of Mikkel, the proud young leader of the Vikings. When he separates Bree and Devin, Bree

IrelandMiddle GradeHistorical FictionSeries Starter
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Alabama Moon

Watt Key · 294 pages

After the death of his father, ten-year-old Moon Blake is removed from the Alabama forest where he was raised and sent to a boy's home, where, for the first time, he has contact with the outside world and learns about friendship, love, and humanity.

Survival StoryOrphansMiddle GradeSeries Starter
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The Secret Island

Enid Blyton · 176 pages

Adventure fiction. Jack, Peggy, Nora and Mike are four children who, in their first adventure together, run away from strict guardians after their parents are thought to have been killed in a place crash. The children make way for a secret island on their huge expanse of property, and together they make a new home constructed with the branches of a willow tree. The much-loved "living house" is jus

Absent ParentSurvival StoryMiddle GradeSeries Starter
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The Golden Compass

Philip Pullman · 399 pages

In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mys

Absent ParentOrphansMiddle GradeSeries Starter

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