BOOK LISTS FOR YOUNG READERS
about homelessness
about mental health
about poverty
about homelessness
PICTURE BOOKS
About poverty:
Ruben feels like he is the only kid without a bike. His friend Sergio reminds him that his birthday is coming, but Ruben knows that the kinds of birthday gifts he and Sergio receive are not the same. After all, when Ruben's mom sends him to Sonny's corner store for groceries, sometimes she doesn't have enough money for everything on the list. So when Ruben sees a dollar bill fall out of someone's purse, he picks it up and puts it in his pocket. But when he gets home, he discovers it's not one dollar or even five or ten--it's a hundred-dollar bill, more than enough for a new bike just like Sergio's! But what about the crossed-off groceries? And what about the woman who lost her money?
Maribeth Boelts
A Bike Like Sergio's
A child, her waitress mother, and her grandmother save dimes to buy a comfortable armchair after all their furniture is lost in a fire.
Vera Williams
A Chair for My Mother
As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
Bao Phi
A Different Pond
Jeremy, who longs to have the black high tops that everyone at school seems to have but his grandmother cannot afford, is excited when he sees them for sale in a thrift shop and decides to buy them even though they are the wrong size.
Maribeth Boelts
Those Shoes
A boy spends the day with Uncle Willie in the soup kitchen where he works preparing and serving food for the hungry.
DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan
Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen
A young boy rides the bus across town with his grandmother and learns to appreciate the beauty in everyday things.
Matt de la Peña
Last Stop on Market Street
Maddi's fridge is almost empty, while Sophia's fridge is full of food. How can Sophia help her friend Maddi without breaking her promise not to tell anyone?
Lois Brandt
Maddi's Fridge
Cassie Louise Lightfoot, only eight years old and in third grade, dreams of flying as she sleeps on “Tar Beach”, the rooftop of her building. If she can fly, then she can fly over bridges and buildings and claim them for her own. This is important to her because her father, a steel worker, is not allowed in the union because of racism. It makes finding work during the winter difficult for her father, stressing the family financially. But tonight, her family is celebrating with a picnic on the beach with their neighbors.
Faith Ringgold
Tar Beach
Despite their own poverty since Daddy died, Mama tells nine-year-old James Otis they need to help Sarah, whose family lost everything in a fire.
Patricia C. McKissack
What is Given from the Heart
Callie and her family are moving from their house to an apartment, so they're having a yard sale. It can be hard to let things go, but in the end, it's who you have - not what you have - that counts.
Eve Bunting
Yard Sale
About homelessness:
After watching a homeless man collect empty soft drink cans for the redemption money, a young boy decides to collect cans himself to earn money for a skateboard until he has a change of heart.
Laura Williams
The Can Man
A homeless boy who lives in an airport with his father, moving from terminal to terminal and trying not to be noticed, is given hope when he sees a trapped bird find its freedom.
Eve Bunting
Fly Away Home
When an Ogre comes to town demanding a bride, the mayor sacrifices the homeless girl with no name that everyone thinks is a pest and a bother, but she finds a way to outwit them all.
Brock Cole
Good Enough to Eat
Just before Christmas, when Frances sees a sad-eyed organ grinder and his monkey performing near her apartment, she cannot stop thinking about them, wondering where they go at night, and wishing she could do something to help.
Kate DiCamillo
Great Joy
A homeless bear living in a city has a hard time getting by, but when a little girl makes friends with him, his life becomes brighter.
Jean-François Dumont
I Am a Bear
A wordless picture book that depicts a homeless woman who is not seen by all the life around her, except by a little boy. Ultimately, in a gesture of compassion, this boy approaches this woman, in an exchange where he sees her and she experiences being seen.
Michael Genhart
I See You
When Lizzie and Ben discover a homeless lady living in their neighborhood, they must reconcile their desire to help her with their mother's admonition not to talk to strangers.
Ann McGovern
The Lady in the Box
A lonely dog finally finds a home after he makes friends with a woman who works at a homeless shelter.
Steven Michael King
Mutt Dog!
James and Bob are the best of friends--everywhere James goes, Bob the cat goes with him. But life wasn't always so happy for the scarf-loving tabby. Inspired by the heartwarming true story of James Bowen.
James Brown
My Name is Bob
Pierre, a pampered poodle, is lonely, so he sets out to find his friends and bring them home
Andrea Beck
Pierre's Friends
Since she left Jamaica for America after her father died, Zettie lives in a car with her mother while they both go to school and plan for a real home.
Monica Gunning
A Shelter in Our Car
Despite living in separate shelters, a little girl and her parents find time to be together, demonstrating that even in the most trying of times they are still a loving and committed family.
Brenda Reeves Sturgis
Still a Family
A teddy bear, lost by the little boy who loves him, still feels loved after being rescued by a homeless man.
David McPhail
The Teddy Bear
After being left by the side of a road with nothing but her favorite sock toy, Tupelo meets a pack of dogs led by Garbage Pail Tex as they are wishing for new homes, then joins them as they catch a passing train and share stories of dog heroes.
Melissa Sweet
Tupelo Rides the Rails
YOUTH FICTION
About coming of age:
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Art Director
JOSIE LANE
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Product Manager
CARLA JONES
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Head of Sales
MARTIN REED
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Art Director
JOSIE LANE
Introduce your team! Click here to add images, text and links, or connect data from your collection.
Product Manager
CARLA JONES
Introduce your team! Click here to add images, text and links, or connect data from your collection.
Head of Sales
MARTIN REED
Secretly providing for himself and a beloved grandfather who is succumbing to dementia, young Arlo is placed in the care of a social worker and runs away to find and connect with his only other family member.
Sarah Sullivan
All That's Missing
When sixteen-year-old Thankful Curtis must leave Bright Island, Maine, for the first time in 1937, she has trouble adjusting to life on the mainland, new people, and "proper schooling," and yearns for her days of farming with her father and sailing.
Mabel Louise Robinston
Bright Island
Recounts the events that occur at the end of seventh grade, when a group of friends plan to trick Carlos, an annoying "problem" student who says he is visited by aliens, while they are on a field trip in the mountains of New Hampshire.
Kevin Emerson
Carlos Is Gonna Get It
The oldest Mariss brother, fourteen-year-old Dewey, attempts to be the "embodiment of responsibility" as he juggles the management of the family's bicycle repair business while sharing the household and farm duties with his siblings after a sudden energy crisis strands their parents far from home.
Leslie Connor
Crunch
In a small, Virginia town, sixth-grader Jessie Lou Ferguson has a crush on the hugely popular Conrad Parker Smith, and when he suddenly develops a medical problem and the teacher asks Jessie Lou to help him, they become friends, to her surprise.
Phoebe Stone
Deep Down Popular: A Novel
Ally, Bree, and Jack meet at the one place the Great Eclipse can be seen in totality, each carrying the burden of different personal problems, which become dim when compared to the task they embark upon and the friendship they find.
Wendy Mass
Every Soul A Star: A Novel
Ever since they were Snotsippers, Jack and the girl have fought, until one day she steals his bike and as he and the Amigos try to recover it, Jack realizes that he is growing up and must eventually leave the "goodlands and badlands of Hokey Pokey."
Jerry Spinelli
Hokey Pokey
Longing for an escape from her extended Filipino family, Lou plans to build a tiny house on land she inherited from her father, but difficulties quickly arise.
Mae Respicio
The House That Lou Built
Twelve-year-old Isobel is unhappy about spending the summer of 1918 at her aunt's home in Hollywood with her mother and sister until her cousin, Ranger, involves the girls in creating the perfect film and, when her father returns from the war, his serious injury becomes their inspiration.
J.B. Cheaney
I Don't Know How The Story Ends
During a summer visit, twelve-year-old Lucy must come to terms with both her grandmother's failing memory and how her mentally-challenged neighbor will impact her popularity when both enter the same middle school in the fall.
Valerie Hobbs
The Last Best Days of Summer
As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.
Virginia Hamilton
M.C. Higgins, The Great
The school year is over, and it is summer in Atlanta. The sky is blue, the sun is blazing, and the days brim with possibility. But Leah feels lost. She has been this way since one terrible afternoon a year ago when everything changed. Since that day, her parents have become distant, her friends have fallen away, and Leah's been adrift and alone. Then she meets Jasper, a girl unlike anyone she has ever known. There's something mysterious about Jasper, almost magical. And Jasper, Leah discovers, is also lost. Together, the two girls carve out a place for themselves, a hideaway in the overgrown spaces of Atlanta, away from their parents and their hardships, somewhere only they can find. But as the days of this magical June start to draw to a close, and the darker realities of their lives intrude once more, Leah and Jasper have to decide how real their friendship is, and whether it can be enough to save them both.
Laurel Snyder
My Jasper June
Forced to spend the summer with her family in rural Vermont, eleven-year-old Megan, a rebellious, immature urbanite gains self-confidence and maturity as she and her dog survive being lost on the Appalachian Trail.
Jane A. Kelley
Nature Girl
In New Orleans' Ninth Ward, twelve-year-old Lanesha, who can see spirits, and her adopted grandmother have no choice but to stay and weather the storm as Hurricane Katrina bears down upon them.
Jewell Parker Rhodes
Ninth Ward
As a fourteen-year-old who just moved to a new town, with no friends, an abusive father, and a louse for an older brother, Doug Swieteck has all the stats stacked against him until he finds an ally in Lil Spicer--a fiery young lady. Together, they find a safe haven in the local library, inspiration in learning about the plates of John James Audubon's birds, and a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage.
Gary D. Schmidt
Okay For Now
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.
Vince Vawter
Paperboy
Charlie, twelve, who has autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, must endure a cross-country trip with his siblings and a strange babysitter to visit their father, who will undergo brain surgery.
Sally J. Pla
The Someday Birds
Twelve-year-old Sarah writes letters to her hero, To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch, for help understanding her mentally ill mother, her first real crush, and life in her small Texas town, all in the course of one momentous summer.
Karen Harrington
Sure Signs of Crazy
A fictionalized account of Zora Neale Hurston's childhood with her best friend Carrie, in Eatonville, Florida, as they learn about life, death, and the differences between truth, lies, and pretending. Includes an annotated bibliography of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, a short biography of the author, and information about Eatonville, Florida.
Victoria Bond
Zora and Me
About mental health:
Lucy Peevey, twelve, and her best friend Cam are perfecting the robot that could win a competition, a scholarship, and a way out of Sunnyside Trailer Park when Lucy's mother goes off her medication and her manic-depressive disorder goes out of control.
Erin Moulton
Chasing the Milky Way
As their mother's manic-depression grows worse, eleven-year-old Esther and her sister Ruth visit various churches hoping to find their father, a preacher named Ezekiel who left them seven years before in 1966.
Ann Haywood Leal
A Finders-Keepers Place
Eleven-year-old Footer and her friends investigate when a nearby farm is burned, the farmer murdered, and his children disappear, but as they follow the clues, Footer starts having flashbacks and wonders if she is going crazy like her mother, who is back in a mental institution near their Mississippi home.
Susan Vaught
Footer Davis Probably is Crazy
In Victorian London, a boy known as Joe Rat scrounges for valuables which he gives to "Mother," a criminal mastermind who considers him a favorite, but a chance meeting with a runaway girl and "the Madman" transforms all their lives.
Mark Barrett
Joe Rat
After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway.
Gloria Whelan
The Locked Garden
A thirteen-year-old boy's life revolves around hiding his obsessive compulsive disorder until a girl at school, who is unkindly nicknamed Psycho Sara, notices him for the first time and he gets a mysterious note that changes everything.
Wesley King
OCDaniel
In 1919. Mama is ill. Father has taken a job abroad. Nanny Jane is too busy to pay any attention to Henrietta and the things she sees - or thinks she sees - in the shadows of their new home, Hope House. All alone, with only stories for company, Henry discovers that Hope House is full of strange secrets: a forgotten attic, ghostly figures, mysterious firelight that flickers in the trees beyond the garden. One night she ventures into the darkness of Nightingale Wood. What she finds there will change her whole world...
Lucy Strange
The Secret of Nightingale Wood
After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is.
Sarah Weeks
So B. It: A Novel
Four years after Alfie Summerfield's father left London to become a soldier in World War I he has not returned but Alfie, now nine, is shining shoes at King's Cross Station when he happens to learn that his father is at a nearby hospital being treated for shell shock.
John Boyne
Stay Where You Are & Then Leave
Twelve-year-old Sarah writes letters to her hero, To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch, for help understanding her mentally ill mother, her first real crush, and life in her small Texas town, all in the course of one momentous summer.
Karen Harrington
Sure Signs of Crazy
When twelve-year-old Della Kelly finds her mother furiously digging black seeds from a watermelon in the middle of the night and talking to people who aren't there, Della worries that it’s happening again—that the sickness that put her mama in the hospital four years ago is back. That her mama is going to be hospitalized for months like she was last time. With her daddy struggling to save the farm and her mama in denial about what’s happening, it’s up to Della to heal her mama for good. And she knows just how she’ll do it: with a jar of the Bee Lady’s magic honey, which has mended the wounds and woes of Maryville, North Carolina, for generations. But when the Bee Lady says that the solution might have less to do with fixing Mama’s brain and more to do with healing her own heart, Della must learn that love means accepting her mama just as she is.
Cindy Baldwin
Where the Watermelons Grow
About poverty:
A little girl, who wants most of all to have a real home and to go to a regular school, hopes that the valley her family has come to, which so resembles the pattern on her treasured blue willow plate, will be their permanent home.
Doris Gates
Blue Willow
In 1835, when his father is put in a Philadelphia debtor's prison, 12-year-old chess prodigy Rufus Goodspeed is relieved to be recruited to secretly operate a chess-playing automaton named The Turk, but soon questions the fate of his predecessors and his own safety.
Gary Blackwood
Curiosity
Twelve-year--old Lowen Grover, a budding comic-book artist, is still reeling from the shooting death of his friend Abe when he stumbles across an article about a former mill town giving away homes for just one dollar. It not only seems like the perfect escape from Flintlock and all of the awful memories associated with the city, but an opportunity for his mum to run her very own business. Fortunately, his family is willing to give it a try. But is the Dollar Program too good to be true? The homes are in horrible shape, and the locals are less than welcoming. Will Millville and the dollar house be the answer to the Grovers' troubles? Or will they find they've traded one set of problems for another? From the author of Small as an Elephant and Paper Things comes a heart-tugging novel about guilt and grief, family and friendship, and, above all, community.
Jennifer Jacobson
The Dollar Kids
Eleven-year-old Fern helps to take care of her impoverished family by foraging for food in the forest, but when a fracking company rolls into town, she realizes that her peaceful woods and her family's livelihood could be threatened.
Nicole Lea Helget
The End of the Wild
In New England in the late nineteenth-century, a fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman and his young son.
Margaret Sidney
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
After her father's landscaping business fails and the family loses their house, sixth-grader Griselda Zaragoza follows her sister's example and begins selling Alma cosmetics while hiding her changed circumstances from friends.
Jennifer Torres
The Fresh New Face of Griselda
In the early 1960s, twelve-year-old songwriter Livy Two Weems dreams of seeing the world beyond the Maggie Valley, North Carolina, holler where she lives in poverty with her parents and eight brothers and sisters, but understands that she must put family first.
Kerry Madden
Gentle's Holler
With love and determination befitting the "world's greatest family," twelve-year-old Deza Malone, her older brother Jimmie, and their parents endure tough times in Gary, Indiana, and later Flint, Michigan during the Great Depression.
Christopher Paul Curtis
The Mighty Miss Malone
A young Negro boy learns the pain of humiliation and anger when his father is given an unjust jail sentence for stealing a ham from a white man. Learning to read and to discover that things do not die but become part of other things brings the youngster new hope.
William Howard Armstrong
Sounder
Ten-year-old Rupert Brown comes from an ordinary family. They live in a small house in the poorest section of Steelville, Ohio, and have little money or food. So when Rupert inadvertently finds himself spending Christmas at Turgid Rivers' house--the richest boy in town--he is blown away to discover a whole other world, including all the food he can eat and wonderful prizes that he wins when the family plays games, prizes he hope to take home to his family so they can have Christmas presents for the very first time. But this windfall is short-lived when Rupert loses it all in one last game and goes home empty-handed. Each member of the Rivers family feels guilty about what happened, and unbeknownst to one another tries to make it up to Rupert in their own unique way, taking him on one unlikely adventure after another.
Polly Horvath
Very Rich
When her grandmother reveals that the daughter that she had given up for adoption is coming from America to visit her Vietnamese family, nine-year-old Binh is convinced that her newly-discovered aunt is wealthy and will take care of all the family's needs.
Carolyn Marsden
When Heaven Fell
About homelessness:
Sixth-grader Sugar and her mother lose their beloved house and experience the harsh world of homelessness.
Joan Bauer
Almost Home
Indigo is a boy with a dream. He spends his mornings in a refrigerator box, his afternoons shoveling snow, and his nights in the basement of a homeless shelter. But during every free moment, he draws and dreams of becoming a famous artist. His best friend Jade looks after him, but she is arrested for shoplifting and he's left all alone. With his box of pencils under his arm, he sets out on a quest to search for Jade and discovers a whole new world ... full of the art he loves. His journey brings him friendship, family, and the courage to hold onto his dreams.
Melody Bremen
The Boy Who Painted the World
Four determined homeless children make a life for themselves in Chennai, India.
Padma Venkatranman
The Bridge Home
In 1893 New York, thirteen-year-old Maks, a newsboy, teams up with Willa, a homeless girl, to clear his older sister, Emma, from charges that she stole from the brand new Waldorf Hotel, where she works. Includes historical notes.
Avi
City of Orphans
Jackson and his family have fallen on hard times. There's no more money for rent. And not much for food, either. His parents, his little sister, and their dog may have to live in their minivan. Again. Crenshaw is a cat. He's large, he's outspoken, and he's imaginary. He has come back into Jackson's life to help him. But is an imaginary friend enough to save this family from losing everything?
Katherine Applegate
Crenshaw
Believing his long-absent father is missing and leaving clues behind through geocaching, Zig, thirteen, relies on his love of electronics, a garage sale GPS unit, and his best friend, Gianna, to search for answers.
Kate Messener
The Exact Location of Home
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.
Mike Lupica
Fast Break
Thirteen-year-old Jeff's life spirals downward into homelessness after his alcoholic mother loses her job.
Tony Abbott
The Great Jeff
Six imaginative schoolmates embark on a game in which they pretend to be gypsies, but when one of the boys runs away and takes up with a group of homeless people, the game threatens to become all too real.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Gypsy Game
On a cold winter day in Chicago, Early's father disappeared, and now she, her mother and her brother have been forced to flee their apartment and join the ranks of the homeless--and it is up to Early to hold her family together and solve the mystery surrounding her father.
Blue Balliett
Hold Fast
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
Louis Sacher
Holes
Living in the family car in their small North Carolina town after their father leaves them virtually penniless, Georgina, desperate to improve their situation and unwilling to accept her overworked mother's calls for patience, persuades her younger brother to help her in an elaborate scheme to get money by stealing a dog and then claiming the reward that the owners are bound to offer.
Barbara O'Connor
How to Steal a Dog: A Novel
Since her father's death, Cora, twelve, longs for a permanent home for herself, her special-needs sister, and their mother while navigating middle school and studying trees using her father's field notes.
Melissa Sarno
Just Under the Clouds
Twelve-and-three-quarter-year-old Felix Knutsson has a knack for trivia. His favorite game show is Who, What, Where, When; he even named his gerbil after the host. Felix's mom, Astrid, is loving but can't seem to hold on to a job. So when they get evicted from their latest shabby apartment, they have to move into a van. Astrid swears him to secrecy; he can't tell anyone about their living arrangement, not even Dylan and Winnie, his best friends at his new school. If he does, she warns him, he'll be taken away from her and put in foster care. As their circumstances go from bad to worse, Felix gets a chance to audition for a junior edition of Who, What, Where, When, and he's determined to earn a spot on the show. Winning the cash prize could make everything okay again. But things don't turn out the way he expects... Susin Nielsen deftly combines humor, heartbreak, and hope in this moving story about people who slip through the cracks in society, and about the power of friendship and community to make all the difference.
Susin Nielsen-Fernlund
No Fixed Address
Valli has always been afraid of the lepers living on the other side of the train tracks in the coal town of Jharia, India, so when a chance encounter with a doctor reveals she also has leprosy, Valli rejects help and begins an uncertain life on the streets.
Deborah Ellis
No Ordinary Day
When authorities threaten to take Sophie, twelve, from Charles who has been her guardian since she was one and both survived a shipwreck, the pair goes to Paris to try to find Sophie's mother, and they are aided by Matteo and his band of "rooftoppers."
Katherine Rundell
Rooftoppers
Fleeing from a cruel step-father, eleven-year-old Robin takes his baby brother and finds shelter with street boys living in a church in a tenement area of New York City.
Barbara Brooks Wallace
Secret in St. Something
Piper's life is turned upside down when her family moves into a shelter in a whole new city. She misses her house, her friends, and her privacy--and she hates being labeled the homeless girl at her new school. But while Hope House offers her new challenges, it also brings new friendships, like the girls in Firefly Girls Troop 423 and a sweet street dog named Baby. So when Baby's person goes missing, Piper knows she has to help. But helping means finding the courage to trust herself and her new friends, no matter what anyone says about them--before Baby gets taken away for good. Told in alternating perspectives, this classic and heartfelt animal tale proclaims the importance of hope, the power of story, and the true meaning of home.
Bobbie Pryon
Stay
To escape rumored terrors in Kansas, New Yorkers Jack and Frances, eleven, and Frances's brother Harold, seven, jump off an orphan train in 1899 and help new friend Alexander to build Wanderville, a safe place for homeless children
Wendy McClure
Wanderville
Twelve-year-old Annabelle must learn to stand up for what's right in the face of a manipulative and violent new bully who targets people Annabelle cares about, including a homeless World War I veteran.
Lauren Wolk
Wolf Hollow: A Novel
YOUNG ADULT
Although Emma Thomas's secret abusive home life has been exposed and her tormentor eliminated, she is still haunted by her experience, and must learn to reclaim her life.
Rebecca Donovan
Barely Breathing
Carmel Fishkill was unceremoniously pushed into a world that refuses to offer her security, stability, love. At age thirteen, she begins to fight back. Carmel Fishkill becomes Fishkill Carmel, who deflects her tormenters with a strong left hook and conceals her secrets from teachers and social workers.
Ruth Lehrer
Being Fishkill
A seventeen year old barely escapes her abusive parents and creates a new identity that is quickly compromised when her attempt to save a young girl attracts a deadly stalker.
J.R. Johansson
Cut Me Free
Five white teenage cousins who are struggling with the failures and racial ignorance of their dysfunctional parents and their wealthy grandparents, reunite for Easter.
A.S. King
Dig
With an incarcerated father and an estranged drug-addicted mother, Shanequa's dreams of higher education feel like a fantasy. When Shanequa gets the chance to attend a prestigious private prep school, she feels like her dreams might become reality.
Annette Daniels Taylor
Dreams on Fire
Teenage Gerald, who has spent years protecting his fragile half-sister from their abusive father, faces the prospect of one final confrontation before the problem can be solved.
Sharon M. Draper
Forged by Fire
With the rent overdue and her bipolar mother missing, seventeen-year-old Adele is forced out of her home and although she tries to maintain the pretense of normality, things rapidly fall apart.
Melody Carlson
Forgotten
As she struggles to recover and survive, seventeen-year-old homeless Charlotte "Charlie" Davis cuts herself to dull the pain of abandonment and abuse.
Kathleen Glasgow
Girl in Pieces
Winona Olsen and Lucille Pryce became friends the night they met outside the police station, both deciding whether to turn their families in for abuse and mistreatment.
Brittany Cavallaro & Emily Henry
Hello Girls
When Hadley McCauley tries to take her own life after an explosive accident, her doctor, friends, family, and the investigator want to know what happened that day, but Hadley's not talking.
Amy Giles
Now is Everything
When seventeen-year-old Victoria Parker is suddenly placed into foster care, she struggles to find words for the abuse that upended her life.
Nikki Barthelmess
The Quiet You Carry
After running away from her fifth foster home, Holly, a twelve-year-old orphan, travels across the country, keeping a journal of her experiences and struggle to survive.
Wendelin Van Draanen
Runaway
A teenaged boy thrown out of his house by his abusive father goes to live with his older brother, who ran away from home years ago to escape the abuse.
Swati Avasthi
Split
Having escaped from juvenile detention centers and foster care, two teenaged boys live on their own in an abandoned shack in a New York City park, making their way by stealing, occasionally working, and trying to keep from being arrested.
Paul Griffin
Ten Mile River
Three teens, connected by their parents' bad choices, tell in their own voices of their lives and loves as Shane finds his first boyfriend, Mikayla discovers that love can be pushed too far, and Harley loses herself in her quest for new experiences.
Ellen Hopkins