18 books like Define Normal
Dear Mr. Henshaw
Dear Mr. Henshaw is a juvenile epistolary novel by Beverly Cleary and illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky that was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1984. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".
Shares: Parent-child relationship, Parent and child, School Stories, Family
Family ties
Annie Ferguson was a bright young Manhattan architect. Talented, beautiful, just starting out with her first job, new apartment and boyfriend, she had the world in the palm of her hand, until a single phone call altered the course of her life forever. Overnight, she became the mother to her sister's three orphaned children, keeping a promise she never regretted making, even if it meant putting…
Shares: Parent-child relationship, Parent and child
Big Girl
In this heartfelt and incisive new novel, Danielle Steel celebrates the virtues of unconventional beauty while exploring deeply resonant issues of weight, self-image, sisterhood, and family. A chubby little girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and ordinary looks, Victoria Dawson has always felt out of place in her family, especially in body-conscious L.A. Her father, Jim, is tall and slender, and…
Shares: Parent-child relationship, Parent and child
Rex Zero and the end of the world
In the summer of 1962 with everyone nervous about a possible nuclear war, ten-nearly-eleven-year-old Rex, having just moved to Ottawa from Vancouver with his parents and five siblings, faces his own personal challenges as he discovers new friends and a new understanding of the world around him.
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Family, Friendship
The porcupine of truth
Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their…
Shares: Family Problems, Family, Friendship
The Bean Trees Anniversary Edition
Taylor, a poor Kentuckian making her way west with an abandoned baby girl, stops in Tucson where she finds friends and discovers resources in apparently empty places.
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Friendship
WWW
Blind from birth, Caitlin Decter received the gift of sight from a signal-processing retinal implant. But she can also "see" the digital data streams of the World Wide Web and a presence that lives within it. As Webmind works with Caitlin to understand her world, a secret government agency becomes aware of this new "intruder."
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Friendship
The Waves
Tracing the lives of a group of friends, this novel follows their development from childhood to middle age. Social events, individual achievements and disappointments form the outer structure of the book, but the focus is the inner life of the characters which is conveyed in rich poetic language.
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Friendship
Ramona and Her Father
Lately Ramona had the terrible feeling that she was the only happy member of the Quimby family. Since her father lost his job, he seemed too worried to love her anymore. Ramona's mother and big sister Beezus had become awfully busy and and grouchy. Even Picky-picky, the family cat, was grumpy. He didn't like her new cheaper food and had eaten the Quimby's Halloween jack-o'-lantern…
Shares: Family Problems, Family
Dawn
Cutler Family #1
Here is the stunning debut of a phenomenal new series...a compelling story of sinister secrets, shattered illusions, tender drams...and a young girl's desperate yearning for the sheltering warmth of a true home and a happy family.
Dawn Longchamp wants more than anything to believe that, at last, she's safe and secure. Her daddy has a good job as a janitor at a private school in…
Shares: Family Problems, Family
A Prayer for Owen Meany
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." So begins John Irving's new novel.
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina…
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Friendship
Blueberries for Sal
Recommended by Mental Floss: 50 Essential Children's Books
Shares: Parent and child, Family
Density of Souls, A
Four friends in New Orleans who were pulled apart during high school are drawn back together when they discover that what they thought was an accident was really murder.
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Friendship
Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren
Unable to compete with her friends' fancy clothes and running ability, irrepressible six-year-old Junie B. finds her own way to make the new boy at school like her.
Shares: Friendship in fiction, Friendship
Secrets, Lies, and Algebra
Tess loves math because it's the one subject she can trust — there's always just one right answer, and it never changes. But then she starts algebra and is introduced to those pesky and mysterious variables, which seem to be everywhere in eighth grade. When even your friends and parents can be variables, how in the world do you find out the right answers to the really important questions, like…
Shares: School Stories, Family, Friendship
Mike and Psmith
Gloomy when his poor scholastic record forces him to change schools just as he is about to become captain of the cricket team, an English boy cheers up when he discovers another new boy in similar circumstances.
Shares: School Stories, Friendship
The million dollar putt
Assisted by his neighbor, Birdie, blind thirteen-year-old Ed "Bogie" Bogard will win one million dollars if he can sink a ten-foot putt in Hawaii's fifth annual Angus Killick Memorial Tournament.
Shares: School Stories, Friendship
Harriet the Spy
Harriet the Spy is a children's novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh that was published in 1964. It has been called "a milestone in children's literature" and a "classic". In the U.S. it ranked number 12 in The 50 Best Books for Kids and number 17 in The Top 100 Children's Novels on two lists generated in 2012.
Shares: School Stories, Friendship