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🧲 Books like this

Belle Prater's Boy

Ruth White · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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One Crazy Summer

Rita Williams-Garcia · 232 pages

Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the pas

Absent ParentChild NarratorMiddle GradeComing of Age
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Because of Winn-Dixie

Kate DiCamillo · 182 pages

Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her becauThe summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket—and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, suffering dog with a sterling sense of humor. A dog she dubs Winn-Dixie. Because of Winn-Dixie, the preacher tel

Absent ParentComing of AgeMiddle GradeChild Narrator
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Bud, Not Buddy

Christopher Paul Curtis · 249 pages

It's 1936, in Flint, Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud's got a few things going for him: 1. He has his own suitcase filled with his own important, secret things. 2. He's the author of Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. 3. His momma never told him who his father was, but

Coming of AgeAbsent ParentBittersweetMiddle Grade
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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.

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetMissing Person
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Moon Over Manifest

Clare Vanderpool · 384 pages

Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past.

Absent ParentComing of AgeMiddle GradeSmall Town
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Good Night, Mr. Tom

Michelle Magorian · 318 pages

During World War II, an aging recluse's stony heart is softened by his friendship with a young evacuee from London.

Absent ParentIdentity FormationChild NarratorMiddle Grade
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Glory Be

Augusta Scattergood · 205 pages

In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.

Child NarratorComing of AgeSmall TownMiddle Grade
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The Midnight Dress

Karen Foxlee · 277 pages

Rose, nearly sixteen, is used to traveling around with her alcoholic father but connects with the people of a small, coastal Australian town, especially classmate Pearl and reclusive Edie, who teaches her to sew a magical dress for the Harvest Festival while a mystery unfolds around them.

Absent ParentComing of AgeMissing PersonBittersweet
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Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages

Absent ParentBittersweetChild NarratorMiddle Grade
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Welcome to Night Vale

Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor · 416 pages

Absent ParentIdentity FormationMissing PersonSmall Town
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Liar & Spy

Rebecca Stead · 196 pages

When seventh grader Georges (the S is silent) moves into a Brooklyn apartment building, he meets Safer, a twelve-year-old coffee-drinking loner and self-appointed spy. Georges becomes Safer's first spy recruit. His assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer becomes more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only fri

Identity FormationMiddle GradeComing of AgeBittersweet
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Brown Girl Dreaming

Jacqueline Woodson · 368 pages

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.

Identity FormationChild NarratorComing of AgeMiddle Grade
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In One Person

John Irving · 448 pages

A New York Times bestselling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Ir

Absent ParentIdentity FormationComing of AgeBittersweet
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Harriet the Spy

Louise Fitzhugh · 298 pages

Harriet the Spy is a children's novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh that was published in 1964. It has been called "a milestone in children's literature" and a "classic". In the U.S. it ranked number 12 in The 50 Best Books for Kids and number 17 in The Top 100 Children's Novels on two lists generated in 2012.

Absent ParentIdentity FormationComing of AgeMiddle Grade
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The Dare Game

Jacqueline Wilson · 249 pages

A fabulous new cover look for this brilliant story starring Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson's most enduring and popular characterI'M TRACY BEAKER, THE GREAT INVENTOR OF EXTREMELY OUTRAGEOUS DARES - AND I DARE YOU TO READ A MORE BRILLIANT STORY THAN THIS!I've bought a big fat purple notebook for writing down all my mega-manic ultra-scary stories in. But especially for my own story. Of how my foster

Absent ParentChild NarratorMiddle GradeBittersweet
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Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea

Morgan Callan Rogers · 308 pages

"When her mother disappears during a weekend trip, Florine Gilham's idyllic childhood is turned upside down. Until then she'd been blissfully insulated by the rhythms of family life in small town Maine; watching from the granite cliffs above the sea for her father's lobster boat to come into port, making bread with her grandmother, and infiltrating the summer tourist camps with her friends. But wi

Absent ParentComing of AgeMissing PersonSmall Town
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Smile

Raina Telgemeier · 213 pages

Identity FormationMiddle GradeComing of AgeBittersweet
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Taran Wanderer

Lloyd Alexander · 256 pages

The fourth book of the Prydain cycle tells of the adventures that befell Taran when he went in search of his birthright and the truth about himself.

Absent ParentIdentity FormationMiddle GradeComing of Age
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Anita and Me

Meera Syal · 336 pages

Identity FormationChild NarratorComing of AgeSmall Town
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The Zigzag Kid

David Grossman, Betsy Rosenberg · 314 pages

Twelve-year-old Nonny Feuerberg's father is the world's greatest detective, wholly dedicated to the war on crime. Nonny aspires to follow in his father's footsteps but, to his father's dismay, his wild side keeps breaking out. Then all of a sudden Nonny finds himself traveling on a train with the magnetic, elegant Felix Glick, international outlaw extraordinaire. Not until Felix has hijacked the

Absent ParentIdentity FormationComing of AgeMiddle Grade
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Mildred D. Taylor · 276 pages

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, it is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence. It is a story of physical survival, but more important, it is a story of the survival of the human spirit. And, too, it is Cassie's story -- Cassie Logan, an independent girl raised by a family for whom independence is primary, a family determined not t

Child NarratorComing of AgeMiddle GradeFirst Person Narrator
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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 ParentIdentity FormationBittersweetComing of Age
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As Hot as It Was You Ought to Thank Me

Nanci Kincaid · 355 pages

In the summer after her father's abandonment, thirteen-year-old Berry witnesses her mother's pursuit of the local preacher and the arrival of a handsome convict who helps repair hurricane-damaged roads in her conservative Florida hometown. By the author of Crossing Blood.

Absent ParentChild NarratorComing of AgeFirst Person Narrator
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Amina's Voice

Hena Khan · 208 pages

"A Pakistani-American Muslim girl struggles to stay true to her family's vibrant culture while simultaneously blending in at school after tragedy strikes her community"-- A Pakistani-American Muslim girl struggles to stay true to her family's vibrant culture while simultaneously blending in at school. After her local mosque if vandalized, she is devastated. Her friend Soojin is talking about chan

Identity FormationChild NarratorMiddle GradeComing of Age

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