Books You Might Like:
Realistic Fiction/Drama
Rats saw God by Rob Thomas.
In hopes of
graduating, Steve York agrees to complete a hundred-page writing assignment
which helps him to sort out his relationship with his famous astronaut father
and the events that changed him from a promising student into a troubled teen.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 7.4
Purple
hibiscus : a novel by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
In the city of
Enugu, Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother, Jaja, lead a
privileged life. Their Papa is a
wealthy and respected businessman; they live in a beautuful house; and they
attend an exclusive missionary school. But, their home life is anything but harmonious. Her father, a fanatically religious
man, has impossible expectations of his children and wife, and severely
punishes them if theyÕre less than perfect. After getting a taste of freedom during a visit to their
aunt's home, tension within the family escalates and Kambili must find the
strength to keep her loved ones together after her mother commits a desparate
act.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.8
True
confessions of a heartless girl by Martha Brooks.
A confused
seventeen-year-old girl, a single mother and her young son, two elderly women,
and a sad and lonely man, with their own individual tragedies to bear, come
together in a small Manitoba town and find a way to a better future.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.0
St. Michael's
scales by Neil Connelly.
Keegan Flannery,
feeling responsible for his twin brother's death and his mother's mental
illness, believes he must atone by committing suicide before his sixteenth
birthday, but he gains new insights when he joins his school's wrestling team.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.7
Wonder when
you'll miss me : a novel by
Amanda
Davis.
Sixteen-year-old
Faith Duckle embarks on a journey of discovery when she runs off with the
circus after attacking one of the boys who raped her the year before.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.0
One of those
hideous books where the mother dies by
Sonya Sones.
Fifteen-year-old
Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's
grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a
famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.1
Holding at
third by Linda Zinnen.
When
thirteen-year-old Matt's older brother Tom moves to a different hospital to
receive a "treatment of last resort" for his cancer, Matt tries to
adjust to a new home and school, a new baseball team, and his feelings about
his brother.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.4
Hate you by Graham McNamee.
Nursing hatred
for the father who choked her and damaged her voice as a child,
seventeen-year-old Alice writes songs she feels she cannot sing and seeks to
reconcile her feelings for herself and her father.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 3.9
Olive's ocean by Kevin Henkes.
On a summer visit
to her grandmother's cottage by the ocean, twelve-year-old Martha gains
perspective on the death of a classmate, on her relationship with her
grandmother, on her feelings for an older boy, and on her plans to be a writer.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.7
The Hanged Man by Francesca Lia Block.
Having stopped
eating after the death of her father, seventeen-year-old Laurel feels herself
losing control of her life in the hot, magical world of Los Angeles.
Firmament by Tim Bowler.
While struggling
to cope with the death of his father, a gifted musician, fourteen-year-old Luke
must deal with a dangerous bully, a lonely old woman, a blind young girl, his
mother's romantic involvement, and his own musical talent.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.0
Damage by A.M. Jenkins.
Seventeen-year-old
football hero Austin, trying to understand the inexplicable depression that has
drained his interest in life, thinks that he has found relief in a girl who
seems very special.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.9
Behind you by Jacqueline Woodson.
After
fifteen-year-old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by police, the people who love him
struggle to cope with their loss as they recall his life and death, unaware
that 'Miah is watching over them.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.1
A heart
divided by Cherie Bennett
& Jeff Gottesfeld.
When
sixteen-year-old Kate, an aspiring playwright, moves from New Jersey to attend
high school in the South, she becomes embroiled in a controversy to remove the
school's Confederate flag symbol.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.6
The Last
Chance Texaco by Brent
Hartinger.
Troubled teen
Lucy Pitt struggles to fit in as a new tenant at a last-chance foster home.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.5
Letting go of
Bobby James, or, How I found myself of steam by Valerie Hobbs.
After being left
by her husband at a gas station in Florida, sixteen-year-old Sally Jo Walker,
also known as Jody, makes some difficult decisions and a better life for herself.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 4.5
The song of an
innocent bystander by Ian
Bone.
With the approach
of the tenth anniversary of the time she was held hostage in a fast food
restaurant, nineteen-year-old Freda Opperman struggles to make sense of her
memories of the event and how they have shaped her life.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.1
A fast and
brutal wing by Kathleen
Jeffrie Johnson.
A story told
through e-mails, newspaper articles, and short story excerpts, in which Niki, a
teenaged girl abandoned by her father, believes that she and her brother can
transform themselves into a cat and a hawk, and a sympathetic classmate coping
with his mother's death tries to protect the pair from rumors of incest.
Drift by Manuel Luis Martinez.
Sixteen-year-old
Robert Lomos, living with his grandmother in San Antonio since his father
abandoned the family and his mother suffered a breakdown and moved with his
little brother to California, struggles to earn the money to follow her and put
his family back together.
Jude by Kate Morgenroth.
Still reeling
from his drug-dealing father's murder, moving in with the wealthy mother he
never knew, and transferring to a private school, fifteen-year-old Jude is
tricked into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.2
The usual
rules by Joyce Maynard.
Thirteen-year-old
Wendy, grieving the death of her mother in the collapse of the World Trade
Center, is taken to live with her father in California where she learns
important life lessons from a variety of people before returning home to her
stepfather and brother, where she feels she truly belongs.
Accelerated
Reader Reading Level - 5.1