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Learning to Swim

10 best books like Learning to Swim (Ann Turner): Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial, Worlds Afire, Seeing Emily, This Full House, Tofu Quilt, Aleutian Sparrow, God Went to Beauty School, Sweetgrass Basket, Girl Coming in for a Landing, The Apprentice's Masterpiece: A Story of Medieval Spain

Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial
AuthorJen Bryant
ISBN0375840478
The year is 1925, and the students of Dayton, Tennessee, are ready for a summer of fishing, swimming, some working, and drinking root beer floats at Robinson’s Drugstore. But when their science teacher, J. T. Scopes, is arrested for having taught Darwin’s theory of evolution in class, it seems...
Worlds Afire
AuthorPaul B. Janeczko
ISBN0763622354
In his first full-length poetic work, celebrated poetry anthologist Paul B. Janeczko creates a stirring fictional account of the 1944 Hartford circus fire.

One summer afternoon in 1944, hundreds of circus lovers crowded under the big top in Hartford, Connecticut, breathlessly waiting...
Seeing Emily
AuthorJoyce Lee Wong
ISBN0810992582
The stunning new talent, Joyce Lee Wong, delivers a poignant, lyrical novel about the experiences of a Chinese American teenage girl by a stunning new talent.

In the successful style of David Levithan's The Realm of Possibility and Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know, this free verse...
This Full House
AuthorVirginia Euwer Wolff
ISBN0061583049
Each discovery disturbs the arrangements of the known world, and it is our job to stay alert to all possibilities.

LaVaughn believes she is keeping alert to all possibilities. She has made it through the projects, she's gotten over heartbreak, she's grown up, and now she's been admitted to...
Tofu Quilt
AuthorChing Yeung Russell
ISBN1600604234
Growing up in Hong Kong in the 1960s, Yeung Ying is tired of hearing how important boys are. After all, she can write letters and recite poems as well as even better than her boy cousins.

Luckily, Yeung Ying's mother thinks "girls and boys are just the same." Despite protests from her husband s...
Aleutian Sparrow
AuthorKaren Hesse
ISBN1416903275
In June 1942, seven months after attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy invaded Alaska's Aleutian Islands. For nine thousand years the Aleut people had lived and thrived on these treeless, windswept lands. Within days of the first attack, the entire native population living west of Unimak Island...
God Went to Beauty School
AuthorCynthia Rylant
ISBN0060094354
A deeply compelling collection of poems about God and our everyday world from a Newbery medalist.

Cynthia Rylant takes teens on an invigorating spiritual journey as she explores what God's life on Earth might be like. Rylant's reflective and often humorous verse follows God as he tries out...
Sweetgrass Basket
AuthorMarlene Carvell
ISBN0525475478
In prose poetry and alternating voices, Marlene Carvell weaves a heartbreakingly beautiful story based on the real-life experiences of Native American children. Mattie and Sarah are two Mohawk sisters who are sent to an off-reservation school after the death of their mother. Subject to intimidation...
Girl Coming in for a Landing
AuthorApril Halprin Wayland
ISBN0440419034
You walk into class—
my head clears.

No kidding.
You are my aspirin.

One girl. One school year. All poems. From friends to first dates, school dances to family fights, this inspiring collection captures the emotional highs and lows of teen life with refreshing honesty...
The Apprentice's Masterpiece: A Story of Medieval Spain
AuthorMelanie Little
ISBN1554511178
Fifteenth-century Spain is a richly multicultural society in which Jews, Muslims and Christians coexist. But under the zealous Christian Queen Isabella, the country abruptly becomes one of the most murderously intolerant places on Earth.

It is in this atmosphere that the Benvenistes,...
Almost Forever
AuthorMaria Testa
ISBN0763633666
"Rapt readers don’t need to know anything about Vietnam to understand love, loss, fear, and waiting. A tour de force." — KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)

When the six-year-old narrator of this lyric novel watches her father march off to serve a year in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, a year...
Split Image
AuthorMel Glenn
ISBN0060004819
Everyone has an image of Laura Li, the most popular girl in school: “stone hearted,” “warmhearted,” “conceited deceiver,” “humble achiever,” “a virgin,” “the hottest girl in the world.”

Award-winning poet Mel Glenn weaves a brilliant web of authentic voices...
Reaching for Sun
AuthorTracie Vaughn Zimmer
ISBN1599900378
Josie Wyatt knows what it means to be different. Her family's small farmhouse seems to shrink each time another mansion grows up behind it. She lives with her career-obsessed mom and opinionated Gran, but has never known her father. Then there's her cerebral palsy: even if Josie wants to forget that...
The Brimstone Journals
AuthorRon Koertge
ISBN0763617423
In a startling, often poignant student journal, acclaimed poet and novelist Ron Koertge creates a suburban high school both familiar and terrifying.

The Branston High School Class of 2001 seems familiar enough on the surface: there’s the Smart One, the Fat Kid, Social Conscience, Bad...
Beanball
AuthorGene Fehler
ISBN0618843485
It's the last inning of a high school baseball game between arch-rivals Oak Grove and Compton. Center fielder Luke "Wizard" Wallace steps up to the plate--and is hit by a beanball, a wild pitch that shatters his skull, destroys the vision in his left eye, and changes his life forever.
In this riveting...
Pug and Other Animal Poems
AuthorValerie Worth
ISBN0374350248
In the follow-up to the well-received Animal Poems, Pug: And Other Animal Poems examines a wide range of animal behavior, from the fleetingness of a fly sipping spilled milk to the constant steely presence of a powerful bull; the greedy meal of a street rat to a cat's quiet gift of a dead mouse on...
New Found Land: Lewis and Clark's Voyage of Discovery
AuthorAllan Wolf
ISBN0763621137
I thought this book was amazing! It is told from the point of view of twelve different members of the Corps of Discovery, plus Capt. Lewis's newfoundland dog. While each of the human members of the expedition speaks in a sort of free verse poetry, the dog's point of view is written in regular prose. I thought...
Fishtailing
AuthorWendy Phillips
ISBN1550504118
Teen violence, bullying and the burning quest to fit in are presented in the poems of four unforgettable high school students: Natalie, Kyle, Tricia, Miguel. Their stories unfold in this explosive new book told in free verse. A story of teen angst like no other, it is based on fictional characters but...
Splintering
AuthorEireann Corrigan
From the remarkable author of the PUSH bestseller YOU REMIND ME OF YOU, a searing novel in poems about a family falling apart after a violent assault.

It's about the aftermath. It's about what happens after a stranger breaks into a house and attacks a family. It's about the sisters who must barricade...
Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems
AuthorKristine O'Connell George
ISBN0618428429
Emma is Jess's little sister . . . and her dilemma. How can one small girl be sweet, funny, imaginative, playful, and affectionate as well as a clinging vine, brat, tattletale, and nuisance–all at the same time? Why is Jess supposed to be a good big sister while Emma doesn't have to be a good little sister?...
The Wolf
AuthorSteven Herrick
ISBN1932425756
One day, I'll find the wolf.
Face to face,
we'll see each other across Wolli Creek
and he'll know I've been waiting,
searching for him all my life.

Jake's dad saw the wolf before Jake was born. They say wolves don't live in this country, yet in the night Jake hears it howling, long...
Vampire Haiku
AuthorRyan Mecum
ISBN1600617727
You hold in your hands a recently discovered poetry journal—the poetry journal of a vampire. William Butten was en route to a new land on the Mayflower when he was turned into a vampire by a fellow passenger, a beautiful woman named Katherine. These pages contain his heartbreaking story—the story...
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