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Morris Gleitzman · back to the book

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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 Devil's Arithmetic

Jane Yolen · 170 pages

Hannah thinks tonight's Passover Seder will be the same as always. Little does she know that this year she will be mysteriously transported into the past where only she knows the horrors that await. Hannah resents the traditions of her Jewish heritage until time travel places her in the middle of a small Jewish village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Hannah resents stories of her Jewish heritage a

HolocaustTearjerkerMultigenerational FamilyMiddle Grade
❤️

The Things We Cannot Say

Kelly Rimmer · 448 pages

HolocaustTearjerkerMultigenerational FamilyBittersweet
❤️

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

TearjerkerBittersweetMultigenerational FamilyEmotional
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Out of the Dust

Karen Hesse · 235 pages

"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. Wh

Natural Disaster SurvivalBittersweetEmotionalTeen Protagonist
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The Graduation of Jake Moon

Barbara Park · 115 pages

Fourteen-year-old Jake recalls how he has spent the last four years of his life watching his grandfather descend slowly but surely into the horrors of Alzheimer's disease.

Multigenerational FamilyElderly ProtagonistBittersweetEmotional
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Escape in time

Ronit Lowenstein-Malz · 174 pages

HolocaustMultigenerational FamilyMiddle GradeEmotional
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Rilla of Ingleside

L.M. Montgomery · 277 pages

Fifteen-year-old Rilla, the daughter of Anne Shirley Blythe, grows from a carefree, irresponsible girl into a strong and capable young woman during the war years, 1914-1918.

Multigenerational FamilyBittersweetEmotionalMiddle Grade
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

TearjerkerElderly ProtagonistEmotionalBittersweet
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Code Name Verity

Elizabeth Wein · 347 pages

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

BittersweetTearjerkerHolocaustEmotional
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The Red Tent

Anita Diamant · 321 pages

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the f

TearjerkerBittersweetMultigenerational FamilyEmotional
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In the Wild Light

Jeff ZENTNER · 432 pages

TearjerkerMultigenerational FamilyBittersweetEmotional
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The Kitchen God's Wife

Amy Tan · 532 pages

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s,

Multigenerational FamilyTearjerkerBittersweetEmotional
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Smile

Raina Telgemeier · 213 pages

Natural Disaster SurvivalMiddle GradeTeen ProtagonistEmotional
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Petey

Ben Mikaelsen · 280 pages

In 1922 Petey, who has cerebral palsy, is misdiagnosed as an idiot and institutionalized; sixty years later, still in the institution, he befriends a boy and shares with him the joy of life.

Elderly ProtagonistTearjerkerMiddle GradeBittersweet
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Haru haru ka ibyŏl ŭi nal =

Fredrik Backman · 162 pages

Elderly ProtagonistMultigenerational FamilyTearjerkerBittersweet
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Elle s'appelait Sarah

Tatiana de Rosnay · 409 pages

HolocaustTearjerkerBittersweetEmotional
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The Forgotten

Elie Wiesel · 320 pages

HolocaustElderly ProtagonistMultigenerational FamilyBittersweet
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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

Natural Disaster SurvivalTearjerkerBittersweetEmotional
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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Lisa See · 269 pages

In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misundersta

TearjerkerBittersweetEmotionalElderly Protagonist
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The Keeper of Secrets

Julie Thomas · 358 pages

Following a priceless violin across five decades, this stunning debut novel tells the story of orchestra conductor Rafael Gomez who, inspired by the playing of an aspiring violin virtuoso who suddenly refuses to play another note, will do anything he can to change that.

HolocaustMultigenerational FamilyTearjerkerEmotional
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Walk Two Moons

Sharon Creech · 288 pages

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.

TearjerkerBittersweetEmotionalMiddle Grade
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Gilead

Marilynne Robinson · 256 pages

**WINNER OF THE 2005 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION** In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He “preached men into the Civi

Multigenerational FamilyElderly ProtagonistBittersweetEmotional
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Elderly ProtagonistBittersweetTearjerkerEmotional
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The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough · 573 pages

The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough. Set primarily on Drogheda – a fictional sheep station in the Australian Outback named after Drogheda, Ireland – the story focuses on the Cleary family and spans the years 1915 to 1969.

Multigenerational FamilyTearjerkerBittersweetEmotional
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