GET REAL...REALISTIC FICTION

Urban Strife | How to Deal | Read 'Em & Weep

URBAN STRIFE..BOOKS ABOUT HARD KNOCKS

• Money Hungry by Sharon Flake--All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry about living on the streets again. The follow up to this story is Beggin for Change.
  Smack by Melvin Burgess--In many different voices, from the addicts to the people around them, this book tells the story of a group of young people addicted to drugs.
• Imani All Mine by Connie Porter--Relates the story of Tasha, an unwed fifteen-year-old mother who survives in the ghettos of Buffalo, New York, and lives her life with fierce determination
• The First Part Last by Angela Johnson--Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.
• Breathing Underwater by Alexandra Flinn--Sent to counseling for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin, and ordered to keep a journal, sixteen-year-old Nick recounts his relationship with Caitlin, examines his controlling behavior and anger, and describes living with his abusive father.
• Monster by Walter Dean Myers--While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
• Speak by Laurie Anderson--A traumatic event in the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year of high school.
• Everytime a Rainbow Dies by Rita Williams-Garcia--After seeing girl raped and becoming obsessed with her, sixteen-year-old Thulani finds motivation to move beyond his interest in his pigeons and his grief over his mother's death.
• Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas--Steve, former straight-A student, is flunking, and his new friends are dopers. Where did it all go wrong? He has only one hope of graduating on time--writing a 100-page paper.
• Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman--Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from severe cerebral palsy and cannot function, relates his perceptions of his life, his family, and his condition, especially as he believes his father is planning to kill him. Follow up book is Cruise Control.
• When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins--Sixteen-year-old Jeff, returning home after having been kidnapped and held prisoner for three years, must face his family, friends, and school and the widespread assumption that he engaged in sexual activity with his kidnapper.
• When She Hollers by Cynthia Voigt-- Tish, a teenager who has been enduring abuse from her adoptive stepfather since she was a small child, finally decides she must do something to stop him.
• Target by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson-- After being brutally raped, Grady finally goes to a new high school where he meets an outgoing African American and several other students who try to help him deal with the horrible secret that is robbing him of his life.

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HOW TO DEAL...BOOKS THAT SOLVE PROBLEMS

• The Skin I’m In by Sharon Flake-- Thirteen-year-old Maleeka, uncomfortable because her skin is extremely dark, meets a new teacher and makes some discoveries about how to love who she is and what she looks like.
• Contents Under Pressure by Lara M. Zeises-- Lucy, a fourteen-year-old high school freshman, experience the happiness and confusion of dating a popular older boy, changing relationships with life-long friends, and sharing a bedroom with her older brother's pregnant girlfriend.
• So B. It by Sarah Weeks--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.
• Alt Ed by Catherine Atkins--Participating in a special after-school counseling class with other troubled students, including a sensitive gay classmate, helps Susan, an overweight tenth grader; develop a better sense of herself.
• The Order of Poison Oak by Brent Hartinger--After "coming out" at school, sixteen-year-old Russel decides to take a counselor job at a camp for burn victims to get away from the antagonism of his classmates, but finds ten-year-old boys have just as many problems as he does.
• Talk by Kathe Koja--Hoping to escape from himself for awhile, Kit auditions for a controversial school play and discovers his talent for acting, struggles with coming out, and both he and his costar face crises in their view of themselves and in their close relationships. Told from two points of view.
• Dreamland: a novel by Sarah Dessen--After her older sister runs away, sixteen-year-old Caitlin decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant, and dangerous.
• One of those hideous books where the mother dies by Sonya Sones--Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.
• The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher--Billy, recently deceased, keeps an eye on his best friend, fourteen-year-old Eddie, who has added to his home and school problems by becoming mute, and helps him stand up to a conservative minister and English teacher who is orchestrating a censorship challenge.
• Spellbound by Janet McDonald-- Raven, a teenage mother and high school dropout living in a housing project decides, with the help and sometime interference of her best friend Aisha, to study for a spelling bee which could lead to a college preparatory program and four-year scholarship.
• Weeping Willow by Ruth White-- Despite all the problems she faces at home, Tiny Lambert's experiences at Virginia's Black Gap High School help her begin to feel good about herself--until the day that she is raped by her stepfather.
• Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco-- When Cornelia's mother runs off with a boyfriend, leaving her with an eccentric aunt, Cornelia must finally confront the truth about herself and her mother.
• Takeoffs and Landings by Margaret Peterson Haddix-- An overweight, timid fifteen-year-old boy and his popular fourteen-year-old sister begin to overcome their guilt over their father's death and reconnect with each other and their emotionally-distant mother when they accompany her on a two-week speaking tour.
• Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman-- One by one, a number of people of varying ages and backgrounds transform a trash-filled inner-city into a productive and beautiful garden, and in doing so, the gardeners are themselves transformed.
• God of Beer by Garret Keizer--To complete a class assignment at his high school in rural Vermont, Kyle and his friends Quake and Diana do a social protest project involving alcohol.

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READ 'EM & WEEP...BOOKS THAT MAKE U CRY

• Stop pretending: what happened when my big sister went crazy by Sonya Sones--A younger sister has a difficult time adjusting to life after her older sister has a mental breakdown.
• When Dad Killed Mom by Julius Lester--When Jenna and Jeremy's father shoots and kills their artist mother; they struggle to slowly rebuild a functioning family.
• A Step From Heaven by An Na--A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.
• Dancing Naked: a novel by Shelly Hrdlitschka --After Kia discovers that she is pregnant and that the father wants her to have an abortion, she must make some difficult decisions, aided by her youth counselor Justin and Grace, a woman she met while volunteering at a senior's home.
• Toning the Sweep by Angela Johnson--On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories about the past and her Black family's history and comes to a better understanding of relatives both dead and living.
• Hangin’ on to Max by Margaret Bechard--When his girlfriend decides to give their baby away, seventeen-year-old Sam is determined to keep him and raise him alone.
• Comfort by Carolee Dean--Fourteen-year-old Kenny Roy Willson fantasizes about escape from his hometown of Comfort, Texas, following his alcoholic father's release from prison.
• Forged by Fire by Sharon Draper--After surviving a fire, Gerald experiences separation from his mother, the loss of his great aunt, and life with his stepsister's abusive father.
• America by E. R. Frank--Teenage America, a not-black, not-white, not-anything boy who has spent many years in institutions for disturbed, antisocial behavior, tries to piece his life together.
• Necessary Roughness by Marie G. Lee--Sixteen-year-old Korean American Chan moves from Los Angeles with his twin sister Young to a small town in Minnesota where he must cope not only with racism on the football team, but also with the tensions in his relationship with his strict father.
• Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger--After starting to publish a zine in which he writes his secret feelings about his lonely life and his parents' divorce, sixteen-year-old John meets an unusual girl and begins to develop a healthier personality.
• Emako Blue by Brenda Woods--Monterey, Savannah, Jamal, and Eddie have never had much to do with each other until Emako Blue shows up at chorus practice, but just as the lives of the five Los Angeles high school students become intertwined, tragedy tears them apart.
• Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper-- An African-American girl and a Latino boy fall in love after meeting on the Internet, but they are harrassed by a gang who objects to their interracial dating.
• If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson-- After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is black and whose parents are separated, and Ellie, who is white and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with people's reactions. (sequel is Behind You)

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