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🧲 Books like this

Mexican WhiteBoy

Matt de la Pena · 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
❤️

The Chosen

Chaim Potok · 284 pages

It's about two jewish boys from different jewish sects with very differing doctrine. The kids meet in the unlikely circumstance of a baseball game, and a terrible accident, that leads them to be lifelong friends

BaseballCultural IdentityAthleteBelonging
❤️

That Summer

Sarah Dessen · 198 pages

During the summer of her divorced father's remarriage and her sister's wedding, fifteen-year-old Haven comes into her own by letting go of the myths of the past.

Absent ParentSelf-DiscoveryBelongingFriendship and Betrayal
🙂

Love Letters to the Dead

Ava Dellaira · 327 pages

When Laurel starts writing letters to dead people for a school assignment, she begins to spill about her sister's mysterious death, her mother's departure from the family, her new friends, and her first love.

Absent ParentSelf-DiscoveryFriendship and BetrayalBelonging
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 368 pages

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

BelongingCultural IdentitySelf-DiscoveryYoung Adult
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Heat

Mike Lupica · 220 pages

**Michael Arroyo has a pitching arm that throws serious heat. But his firepower is nothing compared to the heat Michael faces in his day-to-day life. Newly orphaned after his father led the family's escape from Cuba, Michael's only family is his seventeen-yearold brother Carlos. If Social Services hears of their situation, they will be separated in the foster-care system—or worse, sent back to Cub

BaseballAbsent ParentAthleteTeen Protagonist
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Catching Jordan

Miranda Kenneally · 384 pages

What girl doesn't want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn't just surrounded by hot guys, though-she leads them as the captain and quarterback of her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys and that's just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university. But everything she's ever worked for is threatened wh

Absent ParentAthleteFriendship and BetrayalSelf-Discovery
🙂

The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas · 458 pages

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter navigates between the poverty-stricken neighborhood she has grown up in and the upper-crust suburban prep school she attends. Her life is up-ended when she is the sole witness to a police officer shooting her best friend, Khalil, who turns out to have been unarmed during the confrontation – but may or may not have been a drug dealer. As Starr finds herself even more t

BelongingCultural IdentityFriendship and BetrayalSelf-Discovery
🙂

Lirael

Garth Nix · 526 pages

When a dangerous necromancer threatens to unleash a long-buried evil, Lirael and Prince Sameth are drawn into a battle to save the Old Kingdom and reveal their true destinies.

BelongingAbsent ParentSelf-DiscoveryTeen Protagonist
🙂

Fangirl

Rainbow Rowell · 438 pages

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan... But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up lik

BelongingAbsent ParentSelf-DiscoveryTeen Protagonist
🙂

Gather

Kenneth M. Cadow · 325 pages

Publisher Annotation: A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.

Self-DiscoveryAbsent ParentFriendship and BetrayalTeen Protagonist
🙂

Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages

BelongingCultural IdentityAbsent ParentSelf-Discovery
🙂

This Song Will Save Your Life

Leila Sales · 288 pages

BelongingSelf-DiscoveryFriendship and BetrayalTeen Protagonist
🙂

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Ann Brashares · 310 pages

Carmen got the jeans at a thrift shop. They didn't look all that great; they were worn, dirty, and speckled with bleach. On the night before she and her friends part for the summer, Carmen decides to toss them. But Tibby says they're great. She'd love to have them. Lena and Bridget also think they're fabulous. Lena decides they should all try them on. Whoever they fit best will get them. Nobody kn

Friendship and BetrayalAbsent ParentSelf-DiscoveryCharacter-Driven
🙂

I Am the Messenger

Markus Zusak · 386 pages

Friendship and BetrayalSelf-DiscoveryAbsent ParentTeen Protagonist
🙂

'Tis A Memoir

Frank McCourt · 512 pages

BelongingCultural IdentityAbsent ParentSelf-Discovery
🙂

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison · 338 pages

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s ori

BelongingCultural IdentitySelf-DiscoveryFriendship and Betrayal
🙂

American Born Chinese

Gene Luen Yang · 240 pages

Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.

BelongingCultural IdentitySelf-DiscoveryFriendship and Betrayal
🙂

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Becky Albertalli · 336 pages

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the bo

BelongingSelf-DiscoveryFriendship and BetrayalYoung Adult
🙂

Before I Die

Jenny Downham · 332 pages

A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.

Absent ParentSelf-DiscoveryFriendship and BetrayalYoung Adult
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Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami · 508 pages

The unlikely alliance between Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old runaway, and the aging Nakata, a man who has never recovered from a wartime affliction, brings dramatic changes to both characters as they embark on a surreal odyssey through a strange, sometimes violent, sometimes fantastical world.

Absent ParentBelongingSelf-DiscoveryTeen Protagonist
🙂

Naruto, Vol. 01: The Tests of the Ninja

Masashi Kishimoto · 192 pages

BelongingFriendship and BetrayalSelf-DiscoveryTeen Protagonist
🙂

Bridge to Terabithia

Katherine Paterson · 144 pages

The life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm.

BelongingFriendship and BetrayalAbsent ParentSelf-Discovery
🙂

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt · 817 pages

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra

Absent ParentSelf-DiscoveryFriendship and BetrayalTeen Protagonist
🙂

The Broken Bridge

Philip Pullman · 218 pages

Over the course of a long summer in Wales, sixteen-year-old Ginny, the mixed-race, artist daughter of an English father and a Haitian mother, learns that she has a half-brother from her father's earlier marriage, and that her own mother may still be alive.

Absent ParentCultural IdentitySelf-DiscoveryTeen Protagonist

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