School, Friends, Family & Growing Up
Click on a grade below to see a list of suggested books featuring school, friends, family and the issues of growing up for that level.
In Other Countries
4th Grade
5th Grade
6th Grade
7th & 8th Grade
Misfits & Outcasts
5th Grade
6th Grade
7th & 8th Grade
Relationships
7th & 8th Grade
LGBTQ
7th & 8th Grade
War
7th & 8th Grade War Stories
New Books About School, Friends, Family & Growing Up
Reading Level: Grades 6 - 8
Gabriella is having a perfectly normal day, until she receives a letter from her Death, Hercule, informing her that she has been chosen for Departure. Now she has one week to wrap things up with her friends and family and to try to figure out what will force Hercule to give her a Pardon before he comes and makes her disappear.
Reading Level: Ages 3 - 7
This one word book cleverly tells the story of a ball obsessed dog who has nobody to play with him.
Reading Level: Grades 9 and up
Franciso is a celebrity in his Spanish Harlem neighborhood. He is a top student, popular, and a gifted basketball player. He has a wonderful girlfriend and loving supportive parents. For his senior year he is offered a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in upstate New York. Franciso knows this is his ticket out of the 'hood and into a better life for him and those he loves. But his best friend fears that Francisco will leave him behind. A visit home sets in motion events that lead to bad decisions, betrayals, and tested loyalties. This is a riveting book that readers will not want to put down.
Check availability of this book
Another book about a minority scholarship student is Tequila Worm by Viola Canales.
Reading Level: Grades 4 - 6
Ben Harvester meets a strange old man in a graveyard one day, and again at his aunt's funeral in another town, and again on the street by his house, where the man performs a very strange quick change act. Then, on his first day in his new school he sees two burned children holding the hand of a burned man at the back of the classroom and he hears scratching from an empty classroom and finds the words, "Welcome to Pandemonium, Ben." written on the blackboard. And things only get odder from there as he is drawn into the world of ghosts, demons and lost souls.
Reading Level: Grades 6 and up
Xanthe Jane (don't call her Xanthe) has always loved vampires, as stories, but she knows they aren't real. Then one night she is woken up by a cellphone playing the theme from Dracula and discovers that she is in a coffin, in her grave, and her vampire sire is exhuming her. When her sire is chased off before she can finish digging Jane up, Jane is left to figure out how she could be a vampire when she's never been bitten and what is she supposed to do now, in this tongue-in-cheek vampire novel.