18 books like Big girl small
Youth in Revolt
The hilarious, take-no-prisoners novel about a cynical, sex-obsessed teenager's pining love for an intelligent girl-- now a major motion picture from Dimension Films starring Michael CeraSIX MONTHS IN THE LIFE OF THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS TEENAGERYouth in Revolt is the journals of Nick Twisp, California's most precocious diarist, whose ongoing struggles to make sense out of high school, deal…
Shares: Adolescence, High school students, Coming-of-age
The Last Samurai
"Ludo, age six, is a prodigy. His mother, Sibylla, raises him alone and tries hard to keep his voracious intellect satisfied, while she struggles to make ends meet. With her exasperated guidance, he teaches himself Greek, so that he can read The Odyssey, before moving on to study Hebrew, Arabic, Inuit, and Japanese. And both Sibylla and Ludo share a passion for Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which…
Shares: Gifted children, Coming-of-age
Coming of age around the world
Discover a wonderful world of celebrations from around the world. Featuring the world's main religions as well as some little-known ceremonies and festivals, this book takes an intriguing and colorful look at how growing up and coming of age are celebrated in many different places.
Shares: Adolescence, Coming-of-age
Annie John
Since her first, prize-winning collection of stories, At the Bottom of the River, Jamaica Kincaid's work has been met with nothing short of amazement. The New York Times hailed her "prophetic power" and the Los Angeles Times Book Review said: "No one else seems to be writing quite this way right now." With Annie John, the story of a young girl coming of age in Antigua, Kincaid tore open the theme…
Shares: Teenage Girls, Coming-of-age
Tagebuch eines halbwüchsigen Mädchens
From the book:THE best preface to this journal written by a young girl belonging to the upper middle class is a letter by Sigmund Freud dated April 27, 1915, a letter wherein the distinguished Viennese psychologist testifies to the permanent value of the document: "This diary is a gem. Never before, I believe, has anything been written enabling us to see so clearly into the soul of a young girl,…
Shares: Adolescence, Teenage Girls
How the Light Gets In
A powerful debut from an Australian novelist that features one of the most likeable but contrary figures you are likely to meet in contemporary fiction. Lou Connor, a gifted, unhappy sixteen-year-old, is desperate to escape her life of poverty in Sydney. When she is offered an exchange student placement at a school in America it seems as if her dreams will be fulfilled. Her host family has a…
Shares: Adolescence, Teenage Girls
With the Fire on High
With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s…
Shares: High school students, Coming-of-age
Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
Scott Pilgrim's life is fantastic. He's 23 years old, in a rock band, between jobs, and dating a cute high school girl. Everything's awesome until a seriously mind-blowing delivery girl named Ramona Flowers enters his life.
Shares: High school students, Coming-of-age
Sag Harbor
The warm, funny, and supremely original new novel from one of the most acclaimed writers in AmericaThe year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on…
Shares: Adolescence, Coming-of-age
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a young adult coming-of-age epistolary novel by American writer Stephen Chbosky, which was first published on February 1, 1999, by Pocket Books. Set in the early 1990s, the novel follows Charlie, an introverted observing teenager, through his freshman year of high school in a Pittsburgh suburb. The novel details Charlie's unconventional style of thinking as he…
Shares: Adolescence, High school students
Lullabies for little criminals
"Heather O'Neill's first novel is a story of a young life on the streets - and the strength, wits, and luck necessary for survival." "At thirteen, Baby vacillates between childhood comforts and adult temptation: still young enough to drag her dolls around in a vinyl suitcase yet old enough to know more than she should about urban cruelties. Motherless, she lives with her father, Jules, who takes…
Shares: Adolescence, Teenage Girls
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister.... Until Fern's expulsion... she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half.... I loved her as a sister." As a…
Shares: Adolescence, Coming-of-age
The Little Friend
A young girl with a brother murdered years ago decides to find and punish his killer.
Shares: Adolescence, Coming-of-age
Paper Towns
One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears.
Shares: High school students, Coming-of-age
The Great Gilly Hopkins (M Books)
Eleven-year-old Gilly has been stuck in more foster families than she can remember, and she's disliked them all intensely. She has a county-wide reputation for being brash, brilliant, and completely unmanagable. So when she's sent to live with the Trotters -- by far the strangest family yet -- Gilly decides to put her brilliant mind to work. Before long she's devised an elaborate scheme to get…
Shares: Adolescence, Coming-of-age
The House on Mango Street
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for…
Shares: Adolescence, Coming-of-age
Petropolis
In her stunning debut novel, Anya Ulinich delivers a funny and unforgettable story of a Russian mail-order bride trying to find her place in America. After losing her father, her boyfriend, and her baby, Sasha Goldberg decides that getting herself to the United States is the surest path to deliverance. But she finds that life in Phoenix with her Red Lobster–loving fiance isn't much better than…
Shares: Teenage Girls, Coming-of-age
General Winston's daughter
When seventeen-year-old heiress Averie Winston travels with her guardian to faraway Chiarrin, she looks forward to a reunion with her father, who is a commanding general, seeing her handsome fiance Morgan once more, and exploring the strange new country. What she finds is entirely different. Although the Chiarizzi appear to tolerate the invading army, rebels have already tried to destroy them;…
Shares: Teenage Girls, Coming-of-age