What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorBud, 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
The War I Finally Won
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley · 400 pages
When Ada's clubfoot is surgically fixed at last, she knows for certain that she's not what her mother said she was--damaged, deranged, crippled mentally as well as physically. She's not a daughter anymore, either. What is she? World War II continues, and Ada and her brother, Jamie, are living with their loving legal guardian, Susan, in a borrowed cottage on the estate of the formidable Lady Thorto
The Crossover
Kwame Alexander · 240 pages
"A bolt of lightning on my kicks, the court is sizzling, my sweat is drizzling. Stop all that quivering, cuz tonight I'm delivering," raps basketball phenom Josh Bell. Thanks to his dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court, with crossovers that make even the toughest ballers cry. But Josh has more than hoops in his blood. He's got a river of rhymes flowing through him -- a sick
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
Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver · 560 pages
"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in hi
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
Anne of Green Gables
L.M. Montgomery · 308 pages
Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her.
Shakespeare Bats Cleanup
Ron Koertge · 116 pages
Slob
Ellen Potter
Twelve-year-old Owen Birnbaum is the fattest kid in school. But hes also a genius who invents cool contraptions like a TV that shows the past. Something happened two years ago that he needs to see. But genius or not, there is much Owen cant outthink. Like his gym coach, whos on a mission to humiliate him. Or the way his Oreos keep disappearing from his lunch. Hes sure that if he can only get the T
Fast Break
Mike Lupica · 261 pages
Since his mother's death, Jayson, twelve, has focused on basketball and surviving but he is found out and placed with an affluent foster family of a different race, and must learn to accept many changes, including facing his former teammates in a championship game.
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
One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
Sonya Sones · 268 pages
Written in free-verse poems, this novel follows fifteen-year-old Ruby as she moves from Boston to La after her mother dies to live with her famous movie star father, whom she has never met and is determined to dislike.
Aurora Leigh
Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 403 pages
Aurora Leigh is the foremost example of the mid-nineteenth-century poem of contemporary life. This verse-novel is a richly detailed representation of the early Victorian age. The social panorama extends from the slums of London, through the literary world, to the upper classes and a number of superb satiric portraits: an aunt with rigidly conventional notions of female education; Romney Leigh, th
Before We Were Yours
Lisa Wingate · 424 pages
In this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge until strangers arrive
Solo
Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess · 461 pages
Seventeen-year-old Blade, who endeavors to resolve painful issues from his past to navigate the challenges of his former rockstar father's addictions, scathing tabloid rumors, and a protected secret that threatens his own identity.
Ellen Foster
Kaye Gibbons · 126 pages
Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.
Hetty Feather
Jacqueline Wilson · 309 pages
A wonderful and original Jacqueline Wilson novel, featuring Hetty Feather(who is a bitch), a Victorian Tracy Beaker!London, 1876 and Hetty Feather is just a tiny baby when her mother leaves her at the Foundling Hospital. The Hospital cares for abandoned children – but Hetty must first live with a foster family until she is big enough to go to school.Life in the countryside is hard but with her 'br
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.
For One More Day
Mitch Albom · 208 pages
In an inspirational debut novel by the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, Charles "Chick" Benetto, grieving over the death of his mother, uses alcohol as a crutch to deal with his loneliness, isolation, and depression and the disintegration of his life, until an encounter with his mother's ghost brings him new awareness and leads him to attempt to put his life back together.
Under the Mesquite
Guadalupe Garcia McCall · 224 pages
Throughout her high school years, as her mother battles cancer, Lupita takes on more responsibility for her house and seven younger siblings, while finding refuge in acting and writing poetry. Includes glossary of Spanish terms.
Words with Wings
Nikki Grimes · 84 pages
Gabby daydreams to tune out her parents' arguments, but when her parents divorce and she begins a new school, daydreaming gets her into trouble. Her mother scolds her for it, her teacher keeps telling her to pay attention, and the other kids tease her...until she finds a friend who also daydreams and her teacher decides to work a daydreaming-writing session into every school day. With a notebook "
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.