18 books like Define Normal
Dear Mr. Henshaw
Leigh Botts writes letters to his favorite author, Boyd Henshaw. Following Mr. Henshaw's recommendation, he starts to keep a diary. Through his letters and diary entries, a picture emerges of a growing boy trying to adjust to new situations, particularly to his parents' divorce.
***Dear Mr. Henshaw*** is a juvenile epistolary novel by Beverly Cleary and illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky that was…
Shares Parent-child relationship, Parent and child, School Stories, Family
What I saw and how I lied
In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenage Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome change her life and that of her family forever.
Shares Family Problems, Parent and child, Family
Tom Brown's School Days
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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 Misfits
Kids who get called the worst names oftentimes find each other. That's how it was with us. Skeezie Tookis and Addie Carle and Joe Bunch and me. We call ourselves the Gang of Five, but there are only four of us. We do it to keep people on their toes. Make 'em wonder. Or maybe we do it because we figure that there's one more kid out there who's going to need a gang to be a part of. A misfit, like…
Shares School Stories, 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
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
Our sixth-grade sugar babies
Vicki and her best friend fear that their sixth grade project, carrying around five-pound bags of sugar to learn about parental responsibility, will make them look ridiculous in the eyes of the seventh grade boy they both love.
Shares School Stories, Friendship
Burn baby burn
Nora Lopez is seventeen during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora s family life isn t going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only…
Shares Family Problems, Family
Friendship First
**Our friends enrich every part of our lives. Now you can make them matter the most.**
Despite modern technology and the ample ways we have to keep in touch, we risk neglecting our relationships with the people who have the most profound effect on our well-being: our friends. Weaving together personal stories, interviews with experts, and social research, Friendship First empowers you to…
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How to Be Popular
Does being popular matter?
It matters very much—to Steph. That's why this year, she has a plan to get in with the It Crowd in no time flat. She's got a secret weapon: an old book called—what else?—How to Be Popular.
What does it take to be popular?
All Steph has to do is follow the instructions in The Book, and soon she'll be partying with the It Crowd (including school quarterback Mark…
Shares School Stories, Friendship
Camilla (Camilla #1)
Life had always been easy for fifteen-year-old Camilla Dickinson. But now her parents, whom she had always loved and trusted, are behaving like strangers to each other and vying for her allegiance. Camilla is torn between her love for them and her disapproval of their actions.Then she meets Frank, her best friend's brother, who helps her to feel that she is not alone. Can Camilla learn to accept…
Shares Family Problems, Parent and child
Dogs don't tell jokes
Twelve-year-old Gary, known as Goon because of his constant clowning and joke-telling, tries to change his image and make new friends at school.
Shares School Stories, Friendship
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
Marvin One Too Many
When Marvin refuses to go back to his new school because he is the only one in his class who cannot read, his father decides to help him learn by reading with him.
Shares Parent and child, School Stories
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
Heaven to Betsy (Betsy-Tacy #5)
High School is Heaven! It's Betsy Ray's freshman year at Deep Valley High School, and she and her best childhood chum, Tacy Kelly, are loving every minute. Betsy and Tacy find themselves in the midst of a new crowd of friends, with studies aplenty (including Latin and--ugh--algebra), parties and picnics galore, Sunday night lunches at home--and boys!
There's Cab Edwards, the jolly boy next…
Shares School Stories, Friendship
Girl Meets Boy
Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's re-mix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and…
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