Author |
Title |
Book Location(s) |
| Abraham, Pearl | The Romance Reader Rachel is the daughter of a rabbi and the eldest of seven children in her ultra-orthodox Hasidic family. Craving independence, she begins a quiet rebellion fueled by the romance novels obtained with her forbidden library card. |
Fiction Abraham |
| Alvarez, Julia | How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents The four Garcia girls face a strange new life in America when they are forced to flee the Dominican Republic. |
Fiction Alvarez. Also in Teen |
| Baldacci, David | Wish You Well After an automobile accident kills their father and puts their mother in a catatonic state, 12-year-old Lou Cardinal and her younger brother Oz go to live on their great-grandmother’s farm in the southwestern mountains of Virginia in the post-depression 1940’s. |
Fiction Baldacci |
| Baldwin, James | Go Tell It on the Mountain On his fourteenth birthday, John experiences religious conversion in Harlem. |
Fiction Baldwin |
| Bauer, Joan | Rules of the Road Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father. |
Teen Bauer |
| Bechard, Margaret | Hanging on to Max When his girlfriend decides to give their baby away, seventeen-year-old Sam is determined to keep him and raise him alone. |
Teen Bechard |
| Chbosky, Stephen | The Perks of Being a Wallflower A series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the coming-of-age trials of a high-schooler named Charlie. |
Teen Chbosky |
| Chotjewitz, David | Daniel, Half Human: and the Good Nazi In 1933, best friends Daniel and Armin admire Hitler, but as anti-Semitism buoys Hitler to power, Daniel learns he is half Jewish, threatening the friendship even as life in their beloved Hamburg, Germany, is becoming nightmarish. |
Teen Chotjewitz |
| Cisneros, Sandra | The House on Mango Street For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness. |
Fiction Cisneros. Also in Teen |
| Crutcher, Chris | Ironman How a seventeen year old trains for a triathalon and learns to manage his explosive temper is told in dramatic letters to late night talk host Larry King. |
Teen Crutcher |
| Fischer, Jackie | An Egg on Three Sticks In the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s, twelve-year-old Abby watches her mother fall apart and must take on the burden of holding her family together. |
Fiction Fisher. Also in Teen. |
| Gantos, Jack | Hole in My Life The true story of the author’s experiences as a drug user and smuggler followed by his arrest and imprisonment. |
Teen B G158h |
| Gibbons, Kaye | Ellen Foster Eleven-year-old Ellen survives her mother's death, her father's abuse and an uncaring cast of relatives with the hopeful, indomitable spirit of a true heroine. |
Fiction Gibbons. Also in Teen |
| Godfrey, Rebecca | Torn Skirt Yearning for guidance and friendship, Sara, a troubled and vulnerable teenager, embarks on a dangerous odyssey into the dark underworld of violence, drugs, prostitution, and murder as she searches for Justine, a mysterious young girl in a torn skirt. |
Fiction Godfrey |
| Hamill, Pete | Snow in August. Set in Brooklyn, New York following World War II, 12-year-old Michael, an altar boy, meets Rabbi Judah Hirsch, a refugee from Prague. |
Fiction Hamill. Also in Teen |
| Kidd, Sue Monk | The Secret L ife of Bees After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters. |
Fiction Kidd. Also in Teen |
| Kincaid, Jamaica | Annie John The theme of lost childhood remains constant in this short fictional narrative of rebellious Annie John's coming of age on the small island of Antigua. |
Fiction Kincaid. Also in Teen |
| Letts, Billie | Where the Heart Is When her boyfriend abandons her in a small Oklahoma town, a pregnant teenager takes up residence in the local Walmart. |
Fiction. Letts |
| Martinez, Victor | Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Chicano family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone's struggle. |
Teen. Martinez |
| McCullers, Carson | Member of the Wedding Twelve-year-old Frankie, who literally takes her role as member of the wedding when her brother marries, becomes disillusioned and enlightened in this classic novel set in Georgia in the 1930s. |
Fiction McCullers. Also in Teen |
| Mikaelsen, Ben | Touching Spirit Bear After his anger erupts into violence, Cole, in order to avoid going to prison, agrees to participate in a sentencing alternative based on Native American Circle Justice. He is banished for one year to a remote Alaskan island, where he is attacked by a mysterious white bear of Native American legend. |
Teen Mikaelsen |
| Minot, Susan | Monkeys.The Vincents, a New England family of nine, struggle to keep up appearances amidst the underlying tensions of the squabbles of seven children, a father with a drinking problem, and a marriage being torn apart. | Fiction Minot |
| Moriarty, Jaclyn | Feeling Sorry for Celia An epistolary novel that uses letters written between teenage friends, refrigerator notes from a crazy mother, and epistles that show the narrator's own internal feelings of self-doubt. |
Teen Moriarty |
| Paulsen, Gary | Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer The author recalls his experiences as a migrant laborer and carnival worker after he ran away from home at the age of sixteen. |
Teen B P285b Paulsen, Gary |
| Picoult, Jodi | My Sister's Keeper Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Kate begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body. |
Fiction Picoult. Also in Teen |
| Potok, Chaim | The Chosen A suspected deliberate bean-ball in a game between two Jewish boys schools leads at first to hostility between the Hasidic boy and the less observant secular youth but finally results in friendship. |
Fiction Potok. Also in Teen |
| Quindlen, Anna | Object Lessons Maggie, 12, tells the story of her family in the 1960s in which her grandfather, although dying, still tries to control his children and grandchildren. |
Fiction Quindlen |
| Robinson, Marilynne | Housekeeping Ruth, a young girl struggling to overcome haunting family memories, gradually grows close to Sylvie, the sister of her dead mother. |
Fiction Robinson. Also in Teen |
| Salinger, J. D. | Catcher in the Rye After leaving prep school, Holden Caulfield spends three days on his own in New York City. |
Teen Salinger |
| Santiago, Esmeralda | When I was Puerto Rican The author describes her family and life in Puerto Rico and America. |
B Sa59w. Also in Teen |
| Shimko, Bonnie | Letters in the Attic In the early 1960’s, Lizzy McMann moves from Arizona to New York and strikes up a friendship with Eva “who looks like Natalie Wood and smokes.” |
Fiction Shimko |
| Sittenfeld, Curtis | Prep During the late 1980s, fourteen-year-old Lee Fiora leaves behind her close-knit, middle-class Indiana family to enroll in an elite co-ed boarding school in Massachusetts, becoming a shrewd observer of, and eventually a participant in, their rituals and customs. |
Fiction Sittenfeld. Also in Teen |
| Watson, Larry | Montana 1948 A young man looks back on events in a small Montana town when his father, the local sheriff, had learned that his family was involved in a crime. |
Fiction Watson |
| Weeks, Sarah | So B. It: A Novel After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York, to find out who she is. |
Teen Weeks |
| Wouk, Herman | Marjorie Morningstar A young Jewish girl experiences love, pain, and disappointment in the struggle to become an actress. |
Fiction Wouk |
| Wynne-Jones, Tim | A Thief in the House of Memory The death of an apparent stranger in the Steeple family’s old home triggers troubling questions for 16-year-old Declan as he tries to learn the truth about the mother who suddenly left when he was ten. |
Teen Wynne-Jones |
| Zevin, Gabrielle | Elsewhere After 15-year-old Liz is hit by a taxi and killed, she ends up in a place that is similar and different to Earth. |
Teen Zevin |
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Margie Freilich-Den, Reference Librarian |  |
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| Tel: 203-291-4845 | E-mail: mfreilich-den@westportlibrary.org | |||
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Kris Nash, Library Associate | |
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| Tel: 203-291-4813 | E-mail: knash@westportlibrary.org |
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dcelia@westportlibrary.org