Lists and Suggestions for Teens
List: Novels in Verse
Tricks
Hopkins, Ellen.
Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family...
Bronx Masquerade
Grimes, Nikki.
While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've...
Out of the Dust
Hesse, Karen.
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family'...
T4
LeZotte, Ann Clare.
When the Nazi party takes control of Germany, thirteen-year-old Paula, who is deaf, finds her world-...
Sold
McCormick, Patricia,
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi, though poor, enjoys her life until the Himalayan monsoons wash away her f...
Crank
Hopkins, Ellen.
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. ...
All the Broken Pieces
Burg, Ann E.
Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret h...
A Girl Named Mister
Grimes, Nikki.
A pregnant teenager finds support and forgiveness from God through a book of poetry presented from t...
After the Kiss
McVoy, Terra Elan.
In alternating chapters, two high school senior girls in Atlanta reveal their thoughts and frustrati...
Because I am Furniture
Chaltas, Thalia.
The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her fa...
Becoming Billie Holiday
Weatherford, Carole Boston,
Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday looks back on her early years in this fictional memoir written in verse...
Chasing Brooklyn
Schroeder, Lisa.
As teenagers Brooklyn and Nico work to help each other recover from the deaths of Brooklyn's bo...

Crash Boom Love
Herrera, Juan Felipe.
After his father leaves home, sixteen-year-old Cesar Garcia lives with his mother and struggles thro...
Exposed
Marcus, Kimberly.
High school senior Liz, a gifted photographer, can no longer see things clearly after her best frien...
The Firefly Letters
Engle, Margarita.
Draws on little-known Cuban history to tell a stirring story in poetry. Based on the diaries and let...
Glimpse
Williams, Carol Lynch.
Living with their mother who earns money as a prostitute, two sisters take care of each other and wh...
Keesha's House
Frost, Helen,
Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in po...
One of those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
Sones, Sonya.
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother'...
Orchards
Thompson, Holly.
Sent to Japan for the summer after an eighth-grade classmate's suicide, half-Japanese, half-Jew...
The Realm of Possibility
Levithan, David.
Phears, an evil ghost, wants eleven-year-old Max to help him capture the ghosts of two children whos...
Shark Girl
Bingham, Kelly L.,
After a shark attack causes the amputation of her right arm, fifteen-year-old Jane, an aspiring arti...
Song of the Sparrow
Sandell, Lisa Ann.
In fifth-century Britain, nine years after the destruction of their home on the island of Shalott br...
Street Love
Myers, Walter Dean,
This story told in free verse is set against a background of street gangs and poverty in Harlem in w...
Burned
Hopkins, Ellen.
Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt's ...
Three Rivers Rising
Richards, Jame.
Sixteen-year-old Celestia is a wealthy member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, where she ...
Wicked Girls
Hemphill, Stephanie.
A fictionalized account, told in verse, of the Salem witch trials, told from the perspective of thre...
Make Lemonade
Wolff, Virginia Euwer.
In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother....
Identical
Hopkins, Ellen.
Sixteen-year-old identical twin daughters of a district court judge and a candidate for the United S...