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🧲 Books like this

Whale Talk

Chris Crutcher · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

Michael Lewis · 345 pages

Follows one young man from his impoverished childhood with a crack-addicted mother, through his discovery of the sport of football, to his rise to become one of the most successful, highly-paid players in the NFL.

UnderdogAdoptionAthleteFound Family
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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

UnderdogBullyingFound FamilyRacism
❤️

Holes

Louis Sachar · 240 pages

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day, digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green

UnderdogBullyingRacismFound Family
❤️

Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Markus Zusak · 213 pages

Partly because of their family's poor finances and partly to prove themselves, brothers Ruben and Cameron take jobs as fighters and find themselves reacting very differently in the boxing ring.

UnderdogAthleteYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
❤️

Wonder

R.J. Palacio · 330 pages

## **Don't judge a boy by his face.** ## Auggie is a kid who just wants to be ordinary. He does ordinary things, like play on his Xbox and watch TV and eat. But ordinary kids don't make people stare just by walking down the block. They don't scare kids by looking at his face. They *definitely* haven't had over 20 surgeries by age 10. But when Auggie starts going to school for the first time in h

UnderdogBullyingFound FamilyContemporary Fiction
❤️

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie · 256 pages

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

BullyingAthleteRacismYoung Adult
❤️

The Power of One

Bryce Courtenay · 518 pages

Follows Peekay, a white British boy in South Africa during World War II, between the ages of five and eleven, as he survives an abusive boarding school and goes on to succeed in life and the boxing ring, with help from a chicken, a boxer, a pianist, black African prisoners, and many others.

UnderdogAthleteBullyingRacism
❤️

Max the Mighty

Rodman Philbrick, W.R. Philbrick · 166 pages

This is the second book about Maxwell Kane, who has a heart as large as his ginormous, still-growing body. Two years after the events of "Freak the Mighty," the book which chronicles the adventures of Maxwell Kane and Kevin Avery while they were "slaying dragons and fools and walking high above the world," Max has a chance to show he is mighty in his own right. When a young girl called "Worm" (b

UnderdogBullyingFirst Person NarratorContemporary Fiction
❤️

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

Robert Dugoni · 448 pages

BullyingUnderdogRacismFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Winger

Andrew Smith

Two years younger than his classmates at a prestigious boarding school, fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his female best friend who thinks of him as just a kid, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team with some of his frightening new dorm-mates.

AthleteBullyingYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
🙂

Freak the Mighty

Rodman Philbrick · 176 pages

At the beginning of eighth grade, learning disabled Max and his new friend Freak with a leg disability because his, birth defect has affected his body but not his brilliant mind, When the two meet they become close friends and they figure out that when they are combined they create a powerful force and team

UnderdogBullyingContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Fat Boy vs the Cheerleaders

Geoff Herbach · 311 pages

When the high school cheerleading team takes over a soda vending machine's funds, which were previously collected by the pep band, Gabe Johnson, an overweight "band geek" tired of being called names and looked down on, declares war. When the high-school cheerleading team takes over a soda vending machine's funds, which were previously collected by the pep band, Gabe Johnson, an overweight "band g

UnderdogBullyingYoung AdultFirst Person Narrator
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Naruto, Vol. 01: The Tests of the Ninja

Masashi Kishimoto · 192 pages

UnderdogBullyingFound FamilyYoung Adult
🙂

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus

Dusti Bowling · 288 pages

New friends and a mystery help Aden, thirteen, adjust to middle school and life at a dying western theme park in a new state, where her being born armless presents many challenges.

AdoptionBullyingFound FamilyContemporary Fiction
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The Ruins of Gorlan

John Flanagan · 249 pages

They have always scared him in the past--the Rangers, with their dark cloaksand shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger's apprentice. What he doesn't yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of ba

UnderdogBullyingFound FamilyYoung Adult
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The one plus one

Jojo Moyes · 480 pages

UnderdogBullyingFound FamilyContemporary Fiction
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Eleanor & Park

Rainbow Rowell · 336 pages

## Two misfits. One extraordinary love. ## ---------- ## Eleanor ## ...Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough... Eleanor. ## Park ## ...He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. T

BullyingRacismContemporary FictionYoung Adult
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Out of My Mind

Sharon M. Draper · 305 pages

Eleven-year-old Melody has a photographic memory. Her head is like a video camera that is always recording. Always. And there's no delete button. She's the smartest kid in her whole school, but no one knows it. Most people — her teachers and doctors included — don't think she's capable of learning, and until recently her school days consisted of listening to the same preschool-level alphabet lesso

UnderdogBullyingContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Deadly, Unna?

Phillip Gwynne · 272 pages

Fourteen-year-old Gary Black's life in Australia centers around his large family and footy (Australian football), until he becomes friends with an Aborigine boy and realizes how horrible prejudice can be.

AthleteRacismYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
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Haikyu!!, Vol. 3

Haruichi Furudate

AthleteUnderdogFound FamilyYoung Adult
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The Moves Make the Man

Bruce Brooks · 280 pages

A black boy and an emotionally troubled white boy in North Carolina form a precarious friendship.

AthleteRacismYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
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The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

Josh Berk

Being a hefty, deaf newcomer almost makes Will Halpin the least popular guy at Coaler High. But when he befriends the only guy less popular than him, the dork-namic duo has the smarts and guts to figure out who knocked off the star quarterback. Will can't hear what's going on, but he's a great observer. So, who did it? And why does that guy talk to his fingers? And will the beautiful girl ever not

UnderdogBullyingYoung AdultFirst Person Narrator
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This Song Will Save Your Life

Leila Sales · 288 pages

BullyingFound FamilyYoung AdultFirst Person Narrator
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What We Saw

Aaron Hartzler · 328 pages

The story of a town torn apart by the events surrounding the rape of drunk girl at a house party, from the perspective of the partygoers who witnessed it.

AthleteBullyingYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
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