Looking for some great books to read? Here's a list of some books I like. But if you aren't twelve years old yet, I recommend you hold off on reading them until you are - you'll like this stuff better when you're twelve.

(Note: books that have been newly added to these lists will have a next to them)

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

An Abundance of Katherines  by John Green

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates

Breathing Under Water by Alix Flinn

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Feed by M.T. Anderson

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn

Godless by Pete Hautman

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt

Rash by Pete Hautman

Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas

Skellig by David Almond

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Stoner and Spaz by Ron Koertge

Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Schwa Was Here by Neil Shusterman

The Wanderer by Sharon Creech

If you like funny books, then read anything you can find by Joan Bauer or Louise Rennison.

If you like sports, then Chris Crutcher's books are great, especially Staying Fat For Sarah Burns and Whale Talk.

A LIST of NOVELS-IN-VERSE

If you really like stories written in poetry and want to read some more of them, you've come to the right place! I've only read some of these books, so I can't vouch for every single one. Why don't you read a few of them and let me know how they are?

Some of the themes in these stories sound pretty heavy, so I'd recommend that you hold off on reading them until you are twelve years old, too - except for Love That Dog, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, The Way a Door Closes, and Locomotion, which are fine for younger kids.

A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl by Tanya Lee Stone
Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva all get mixed up with a senior boy–a cool, slick, sexy boy who can talk them into doing almost anything he wants. In a blur of high school hormones and personal doubt, each girl struggles with how much to give up and what ultimately to keep for herself.

After the Death of Anna Gonzales by Terri Fields
The story of high school students coping with the suicide of a classmate.

A Place Like This by Steven Herrick
Jack and Annabel have decided to put off university and drive around the country. It all seems wildly romantic, but when their car dies two days into the trip, things change.

Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
In June of 1942, seven months after attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy invaded Alaska's Aleutian Islands. This is Vera's story, but it is woven from the same fabric as the stories of displaced peoples throughout history. It chronicles the struggle to survive and to keep community and heritage intact despite harsh conditions in an alien environment.

Almost Forever by Maria Testa
A spare, lyrical - and ultimately heartening - novel about one family’s experience during the Vietnam War that has much to say to a new generation of readers.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
A winged red monster named Geryon struggles with his family, falls for the indifferent Herakles, and discovers photography as a means of comfort and escape.

Becoming Joe DiMaggio by Maria Testa
It's 1936, and the Yankees have just hired a star center fielder whose name sounds like music. What could be a better time for Papa Angelo's grandson to be born? Christened after the legendary ballplayer, young Joseph Paul learns much at his Italian grandfather's knee.

BeenTo Yesterdays: Poems of a Life by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Chronicles Hopkins' growing-up years between the ages of twelve and thirteen.

Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes
When a high school teacher in the Bronx begins to host open-mike poetry in his classroom on Fridays, his students find a forum to express their identity issues and forge unexpected connections with one another.

By The River by Steven Herrick
In 1962 Harry Hodby, 14, dreams of escaping his sleepy, riverside community, but he is held by the memories of loved ones lost in the seasonal floods--his mother and his lively, brilliant best friend, Linda.

Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina -- she's fearless. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul -- her life.

CrashBoomLove by Felipe Herrera
After his father leaves home, sixteen-year-old Cesar Garcia lives with his mother and struggles through the painful experiences of growing up as a Mexican American high school student.

Dark Sons by Nikki Grimes
Teen-age Sam can barely contain his fury and hurt when his father gets married again, this time to a young white woman, who gives Sam a new baby brother.

Escaping Tornado Season by Julie Williams
Allie's swept up in a tornado of loss as she turns 14, but writing helps her survive the deaths of her father and brother, life with her emotionally unstable mother, and the challenges of moving to an ethnically divided community where friendship with an Ojibwe boy and girl is forbidden.

Foreign Exchange: A mystery in poems by Mel Glenn
A series of poems that reflect the thoughts of various people caught up in the events surrounding the murder of a beautiful high school student

Frenchtown Summer by Robert Cormier
A series of vignettes in which the writer reminisces about his life as a twelve-year-old boy living in a small town during the hot summer of 1938.

Girl Coming in for a Landing by April Halprin Wayland
A series of poems about a teenaged girl who secretly likes to write poetry.

God Went to Beauty School by Cynthia Rylant
In God Went to Beauty School, Cynthia Rylant imagines a God inspired to go out and experience human things. But what would God do if He could live in a human world? Would He write a fan letter? Get a dog?

Hard Hit by Ann Turner
Mark lives and breathes baseball. Sure, there's pressure from his coach and his dad, who both push him hard, but it's nothing that time with his buddy, Eddie, or with his crush, Diane, can't diffuse. But all that changes when Mark's dad is diagnosed with cancer, and everything Mark has ever believed in--love, God, and baseball--is called into question.
 
Heartbeat by Sharon Creech
Run run run. That's what twelve-year-old Annie loves to do. When she's barefoot and running, she can hear her heart beating . . . thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP. It's a rhythm that makes sense in a year when everything's shifting: Her mother is pregnant, her grandfather is forgetful, and her best friend, Max, is always moody. Everything changes over time, just like the apple Annie's been assigned to draw. But as she watches and listens, Annie begins to understand the many rhythms of life, and how she fits within them.

Hold Me Tight by Lorie Ann Grover
I’m leaving. Dad's words come as a complete shock to Essie. How can he just walk out on her and the family, especially when Mom is pregnant?
Essie keeps her dad's leaving a secret. Then Essie's classmate, Chris Crow, disappears, and everyone finds out he's been kidnapped.

Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown
When her mom runs away from home, Rachel is left behind with her emotionally distant father and many questions she cannot answer. Over time, she learns the truth about her mom. But, it's only when she learns the truth about her dad, the rock--immoveable and always there for her to lean on--that Rachel can move toward understanding.

Jinx by Margaret Wild
About a girl who starts calling herself Jinx when her two boyfriends both die.

Judy Scuppernong by Brenda Seabrooke
Three best friends are drawn into the world of their new neighbor, Judy Scuppernong, and soon discover the elusive Judy's terrible secret.

Jump Ball: A Season in Poems by Mel Glenn
The story of a high school basketball team's season through a series of poems reflecting the feelings of students, their families, teachers, and coaches.

Keesha's House by Helen Frost
Keesha finds shelter in a house in her inner-city neighborhood and helps other troubled teens find home and family there.

Learning to Swim: A memoir by Ann Warren Turner
A series of poems convey the feelings of a young girl whose sense of joy and security at the family's summer house is shattered when an older boy who lives nearby sexually abuses her.

A Lion's Hunger: Poems of First Love by Ann Warren Turner
Poems follow a year in a girl's life as she meets a boy, starts dating him, falls in love, and sees their special relationship come to an end.

Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson
Lonnie Collins Motion is a New York City fifth grader with a gifted teacher who assigns her class to write different forms of poetry. The house fire that killed Lonnie's parents and the four years of trauma and slow healing that follow are gradually revealed through his writings.

Loose Threads by Lorie Ann Grover
A seventh grader tries to deal with her grandmother's battle with breast cancer.

Love Ghosts and Facial Hair by Steven Herrick
Jack's got a lot on his mind: He's trying to figure out the mystery of the opposite sex, he can't stop wondering about facial hair, and he won't let go of his mother's ghost, even though she died seven years ago. Jack knows he can't hang on to the past forever, but what he doesn't know is how to let go.

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
A young boy deals with the death of his beloved dog through writing a series of poems in different forms.

Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff
In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.

North Of Everything by Craig Crist-Evans
A new beginning and a simpler life — that's what Mom and Dad and their young son are looking for when they move north of everything, leaving the city life of Miami for a farm in Montpelier, Vermont. But even as the now-rural family takes careful note of the changing seasons, they encounter their own unexpected series of beginnings and endings.

One Night by Margaret Wild
Gabe is the best looking guy in school—that’s why his friends send him to get girls to their party. Helen is not much to look at—that’s why her friends want her to come along. But Helen gets under Gabe’s skin in a way no other girl has.

On Pointe  by Lorie Ann Grover
For ten long years Clare has been taking ballet lessons, watching what she eats, giving up friends and a social life, and practicing until her feet bleed,  all for the sake of that dream. And now, with the audition for City Ballet Company right around the corner, the dream feels so close. But what if the dream doesn't come true?

One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies by Sonya Sones
Fifteen-year-old Ruby has to leave the boy she loves and move from the East Coast to Hollywood to live with her famous movie star father who she's never even met because he divorced her mother before she was even born.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

Running Back to Luddie by Angela Johnson
Tells the story of a young teen living with her father and aunt who reflects on her family while she waits to meet her mother, whom she has never known.

Scout by Christine Ford
Cecelia prides herself on being the lookout in the woods behind her Texas home. After all, a person as skinny and gullible as Redbud, the new kid at school, needs someone to watch over him. Besides, with Pop spending all his time in the garden, Sis off with her boyfriend, and Cecelia’s mom dead and gone, it’s not like Cecelia has anything else to do.
 
Seventeen by Liz Rosenberg
Seventeen-year-old Stephanie journeys from childhood to adulthood as she experiences first love and faces her fear that she may have inherited her mother's mental illness.

Shakespeare Bats Clean Up by Ron Koertge
A teenager sick with mononucleosis begins exploring writing different forms of poetry while stuck at home in bed.

Sister Slam and the Poetic Motormouth Roadtrip by Linda Oatman High
Laura Crapper, a seventeen-year-old combat-boot-wearing poet with spiked red hair, renames herself Sister Slam and hits the road with her best friend, Twig. The girls and their fresh style of poetry take the city by storm, but when Laura's father back in Pennsylvania has a heart attack, she must face her fears about home and the still-raw loss of her mother.

Soda Jerk by Cynthia Rylant
A series of poems spoken by a young soda jerk in a small town as he observes the people and places around him.
 
Soul Moon Soup by Lindsay Lee Johnson
About a girl who goes to live with her grandmother in the country when her father leaves and she and her mother are unable to survive in the city.

Stardust otel by Paul B. Janeczko
A series of poems in which a young boy describes his life with his flower children parents, his friends, and neighbors.

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones
The story of what happens when thirteen-year-old Cookie's big sister has a nervous breakdown and has to be hospitalized.

Taking of Room 114: A hostage drama in poems by Mel Glenn
A series of poems reflect the thoughts of school officials, parents, police, and especially a class of seniors who have been taken hostage by their high school history teacher.

Talking In The Dark by Billy Merrell
This is a memoir that is lived in moments. The moments you know - when you see your parents' marriage dissolving, when you realize you're a boy who likes boys, when you speak the truth and don't know if it will be heard. The moments you don't recognize until later - when you leave things unsaid (even to yourself), when you feel your boyfriend letting go, when you give up on love. And the moment you get love back.

The Brimstone Journals by Ron Koertge
In a series of short interconnected poems, students at a high school nicknamed Brimstone reveal the violence existing and growing in their lives.

The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith
The story of a girl navigating the unknown, the difficult limbo between youth and adulthood.

The Realm Of Possibility by David Levithan
Meet a boy whose girlfriend is in love with Holden Caulfield; a girl who loves the boy who wears all black; a boy with the perfect body; and a girl who writes love songs for a girl she can’t have.

The Secret of Me  by Meg Kearney
Being adopted is a fact of life in the McLane household: fourteen-year-old Lizzie, as well as her older brother and sister were adopted as infants. But dry facts rarely encompass feelings, and what it feels like to be adopted is something Lizzie never dares openly discuss with her loving parents—let alone with outsiders. More and more Lizzie yearns to confide in others, especially her boyfriend, Peter. But something stops her. Will Peter think she is "less" because her birthmother gave her away?

The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick
Weary of life with his alcoholic, abusive father, sixteen-year-old Billy packs a few belongings and hits the road, hoping for something better than what he left behind. He finds a home in an abandoned freight train outside a small town, where he falls in love with rich, restless Caitlin and befriends a fellow train resident.

The Way a Door Closes by Hope Anita Smith
There are so many ways that a door can close, but it's not just the closing; it's the knowing. And thirteen-year-old CJ knows too much-about losing his father, about his family's pain, and especially about what it means to hold things together when times are the toughest.

The Voyage of the Arctic Tern by Hugh Montgomery
A high-seas adventure that spans several centuries.

True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff
The sequel to Make Lemonade tells more of LaVaughn's story as she learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it.

Under the Pear Tree by Brenda Seabrooke
This sequel to Judy Scuppernong revisits the same three girls, this time during the summer when the narrator's cousin Rusty visits from the city.

What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
Fourteen-and-a-half year old Sophie is having a hard time trying to figure out the difference between love and lust.

Whitechurch by Chris Lynch
Describes the stresses and strains in the triangular relationship of two aimless teenage boys and a girl living in a small town.

Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? A mystery in poems by Mel Glenn
About the reactions of students, colleagues, and others when a high school teacher is shot to death.

Who Will Tell My Brother? by Marlene Carvell
The story of a half-American-Indian high school student who tries to convince school officials to get rid of offensive Indian mascots used by the sports teams.

Witness by Karen Hesse
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.

World’s Afire: The Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 by Paul Janezcko
An account of a horrific event that killed 167 people, mostly women and children, and injured 500. In a collection of narrative poems, Janeczko describes a circus fire that took place on July 6, 1944 in Hartford, CT, from the viewpoints of those who were there.

You Remind Me of You: a Poetry Memoir by Eireann Corrigan
An anorexic girl recovers when her boyfriend tries to kill himself.