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The Liberation of Gabriel King

K.L. Going · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

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.

BullyingAmerican SouthMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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A Monster Calls

Patrick Ness · 224 pages

A brilliant, graphic novel written by young but promising Patrick Ness. This is the story about 13 year old Conor and his mother who is dying of cancer. Conor has to face the cruelty of real life and learn to let his close and dearest go. When no human can help him Monster appears...

BullyingAnxietyMiddle GradeMale Lead
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Yankee Girl

Mary Ann Rodman · 229 pages

When her FBI-agent father is transferred to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, eleven-year-old Alice wants to be popular but also wants to reach out to the one black girl in her class in a newly-integrated school.

BullyingAmerican SouthMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
❤️

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

Middle GradeAmerican SouthBullyingHistorical Fiction
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Smile

Raina Telgemeier · 213 pages

BullyingAnxietyMiddle GradeComing of Age
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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

BullyingMiddle GradeRacismComing of Age
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Twerp

Mark Goldblatt

BullyingMiddle GradeHistorical FictionMale Lead
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Paperboy

Vince Vawter · 224 pages

When an eleven-year-old boy takes over a friend's newspaper route in July, 1959, in Memphis, his debilitating stutter makes for a memorable month.

American SouthMiddle GradeHistorical FictionRacism
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Alabama Moon

Watt Key · 294 pages

After the death of his father, ten-year-old Moon Blake is removed from the Alabama forest where he was raised and sent to a boy's home, where, for the first time, he has contact with the outside world and learns about friendship, love, and humanity.

BullyingAmerican SouthMiddle GradeMale Lead
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AnxietyBullyingMiddle GradeMale Lead
🙂

Icy Sparks

Gwyn Hyman Rubio · 308 pages

At the age of ten, an Appalachian girl develops croaks, jerks and spasms, which leads to her explusion from school. After treatment--she has Tourette's syndrome--she learns to control herself, attends college and there is a happy ending.

BullyingAmerican SouthHistorical FictionComing of Age
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The Jealous Kind

James Lee Burke · 383 pages

Intervening when he sees the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Aaron Holland Broussard inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob in his Korean War-era Texas community.

BullyingAmerican SouthHistorical FictionMale Lead
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Crash

Jerry Spinelli · 162 pages

Take a look behind the bully in this modern classic from Newbery medalist Jerry Spinelli that packs a punch. And don't miss the highly anticipated new novel, Dead Wednesday. Cocky seventh-grade super-jock Crash Coogan got his nickname the day he used his first football helmet to knock his cousin Bridget flat on her backside. And he has been running over people ever since, especially Penn Webb,

BullyingMiddle GradeComing of AgeMale Lead
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Leaving Atlanta

Tayari Jones · 263 pages

"It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine would be murdered by the end of 1981. Like all kids across the city, fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison were discovering that back-to-school now meant special safety lessons, indoor recess, and being thrown into a world thei

BullyingAmerican SouthHistorical FictionRacism
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Seeing Red

Kathryn Erskine

American SouthMiddle GradeHistorical FictionMale Lead
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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

BullyingMiddle GradeMale LeadComing of Age
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The Way of the Warrior

Chris Bradford

BullyingMiddle GradeHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Prep

Curtis Sittenfeld · 427 pages

Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate famil

BullyingAnxietyComing of AgeRacism
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Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson · 197 pages

"Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated

BullyingAnxietyComing of Age
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Lies We Tell Ourselves

Robin Talley · 376 pages

In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project.

BullyingAmerican SouthHistorical FictionRacism
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The Hundred Dresses

Eleanor Estes · 80 pages

Wanda wore the same faded blue dress to school every day. It was always clean but sometimes it looked as though it had been washed and never ironed. Peggy started the game of the dresses when suddenly one day Wanda said, "I have a hundred dresses at home — all lined up in my closet." After that it was fun to stop Wanda on the way to school and ask, "How many dresses did you say you have?" "A hundr

BullyingMiddle GradeRacismComing of Age
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A Thousand Never Evers

Shana Burg · 310 pages

IN KUCKACHOO, MISSISSIPPI, 1963, Addie Ann Pickett worships her brother Elias and follows in his footsteps by attending the black junior high school. But when her careless act leads to her brother's disappearance and possible murder, Addie Ann, Mama, and Uncle Bump struggle with not knowing if he's dead or alive. Then a good deed meant to unite Kuckachoo sets off a chain of explosive events. Addie

American SouthMiddle GradeHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Belle Prater's Boy

Ruth White · 196 pages

When Woodrow's mother suddenly disappears, he moves to his grandparents' home in a small Virginia town where he befriends his cousin and together they find the strength to face the terrible losses and fears in their lives.

Middle GradeBullyingAmerican SouthComing of Age
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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.

BullyingMiddle GradeMale LeadComing of Age

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