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The Wild Book

Margarita Engle · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

The Crazy Man

Pamela Porter · 176 pages

Twelve-year-old Emaline Bitterman loves her home on the prairies. She loves helping her father in the fields and her dog, Prince. But farming in southern Saskatchewan in the mid 1960s is not easy. And then one day Emaline tries to stop Prince from chasing a hare into the path of the tractor her father is driving, and her leg is caught in the discer, leaving her with a permanent disability. In his

Verse NovelDisability RepresentationMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
❤️

T4

Ann Clare LeZotte · 112 pages

When the Nazi party takes control of Germany, thirteen-year-old Paula, who is deaf, finds her world-as-she-knows-it turned upside down, as she is taken into hiding to protect her from the new law nicknamed T4.

Verse NovelDisability RepresentationMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Full Cicada Moon

Marilyn Hilton · 400 pages

In 1969 twelve-year-old Mimi and her family move to an all-white town in Vermont, where Mimi's mixed-race background and interest in "boyish" topics like astronomy make her feel like an outsider.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionMiddle GradeFemale Lead
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Formerly Shark Girl

Kelly Bingham

Verse NovelDisability RepresentationFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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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

Verse NovelMiddle GradeHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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May B.

Caroline Starr Rose

When a failed wheat crop nearly bankrupts the Betterly family, Pa pulls twelve-year-old May from school and hires her out to a couple new to the Kansas frontier.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionMiddle GradeFemale Lead
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Unbound: A Novel in Verse

Ann E. Burg · 345 pages

The day nine-year-old Grace is called to work in the kitchen in the Big House, everyone warns her to to keep her head down and her thoughts to herself, but the more she sees of the oppressive Master and his hateful wife, the more she questions things until one day her thoughts escape--and to avoid being separated she and her family flee into the Dismal Swamp, to join the other escaped slaves who l

Verse NovelMiddle GradeHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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A Time to Dance

Padma Venkatraman · 321 pages

Verse NovelDisability RepresentationFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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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.

Verse NovelMiddle GradeCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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Yellow Star

Jennifer Roy · 227 pages

From 1939, when Syvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland's Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation.

Verse NovelMiddle GradeHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Kaleidoscope Eyes

Jennifer Fisher Bryant

Will Lyza's 1968 summer mystery lead to . . . pirate treasure?When Lyza helps her dad clean out her late grandfather's house, a mysterious surprise brightens the sad task. In Gramps's dusty attic, Lyza discovers three maps, carefully folded and stacked, bound by a single rubber band. On top, an envelope says "For Lyza ONLY." What could this possibly be? It takes the help of her two best friends, M

Verse NovelMiddle GradeHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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One

Sarah Crossan · 393 pages

Despite problems at home, sixteen-year-old conjoined twins Tippi and Grace are loving going to school for the first time and making real friends when they learn that a cardiac problem will force them to have separation surgery, which they have never before considered.

Verse NovelDisability RepresentationFemale Lead
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Inside Out & Back Again

Thanhha Lai · 274 pages

Inside Out & Back Again is a verse novel by Thanhha Lai. The book was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and one of the two Newbery Honors. The novel was based on her first year in the United States, as a ten-year-old girl who spoke no English in 1975.

Verse NovelMiddle GradeHistorical FictionCultural Identity
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Odette's Secrets

Maryann Macdonald

When Odette Meyer's father is sent to a Nazi work camp, her mother sends Odette from Paris to the French countryside where she must pretend to be a Catholic peasant to remain safe, while secrets burn within her.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionMiddle GradeFemale Lead
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Looking for Me

Betsy Rosenthal · 176 pages

In 1936 Baltimore, an eleven-year-old Jewish girl, one of twelve siblings, tries to find her place in her overcrowded family.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionMiddle GradeFemale Lead
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Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War

Helen Frost · 138 pages

Twelve-year-olds Anikwa, of the Miami village of Kekionga, and James, of the trading post outside Fort Wayne, find their friendship threatened by the rising fear and tension brought by the War of 1812. Told in free verse, twelve-year-olds Anikwa, of the Miami village of Kekionga, and James, of the trading post outside Fort Wayne, find their friendship threatened by the rising fear and tension bro

Verse NovelHistorical FictionMiddle GradeTeen Protagonist
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Red Butterfly

A.L. Sonnichsen · 400 pages

A young orphaned girl in modern-day China discovers the meaning of family in this inspiring story told in verse, in the tradition of Inside Out and Back Again and Sold. Kara never met her birth mother. Abandoned as an infant, she was taken in by an American woman living in China. Now eleven, Kara spends most of her time in their apartment, wondering why she and Mama cannot leave the city of Tianji

Verse NovelMiddle GradeFemale LeadCultural Identity
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Wicked Girls

Stephanie Hemphill · 408 pages

A fictionalized account, told in verse, of the Salem witch trials, told from the perspective of three young women living in Salem in 1692--Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott, and Ann Putnam, Jr.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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Planet Middle School

Nikki Grimes · 154 pages

A series of poems describes all the baffling changes at home and at school in twelve-year-old Joylin's transition from tomboy basketball player to not-quite-girly girl.

Verse NovelMiddle GradeFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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Paper Hearts

Meg Wiviott · 352 pages

"Amid the brutality of Auschwitz during the Holocaust, a forbidden gift helps two teenage girls find hope, friendship, and the will to live in this novel in verse that?s based on a true story."--Amazon.com.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood

Jame Richards · 304 pages

Sixteen-Year-Old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel's hired boy. It's a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it's a love that could get Celestia disowned. T

Verse NovelHistorical FictionFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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Addie on the Inside

James Howe · 215 pages

The Gang of Five is back in this much-anticipated follow-up to The Misfits and Totally Joe . Addie Carle, the only girl in the group of friends, is outspoken, opinionated, and sometimes…just a bit obnoxious. But as seventh grade progresses, Addie’s not so sure anymore about who she is. It seems her tough exterior is just a little too tough, and that doesn’t help her deal with Addie on the Inside

Verse NovelMiddle GradeFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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Family

Micol Ostow · 376 pages

In the 1960s, seventeen-year-old Melinda leaves an abusive home for San Francisco, meets the charismatic Henry, and follows him to his desert commune where sex and drugs are free, but soon his "family" becomes violent against rich and powerful people and she is compelled to join in.

Verse NovelHistorical FictionFemale LeadTeen Protagonist
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Down the Rabbit Hole, Chicago, Illinois, 1871: The Diary of Pringle Rose

Susan Campbell Bartoletti

It is 1871 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and fourteen-year-old Pringle Rose, still grieving from the death of her parents, takes her brother Gideon, who has Down syndrome, escapes from her uncle and aunt, and takes a train to Chicago--but disaster seems to follow her there.

Disability RepresentationMiddle GradeHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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