Ten Miles Past Normal
10 best books like Ten Miles Past Normal (Frances O'Roark Dowell): Jersey Tomatoes are the Best, Like Mandarin, What Can(t) Wait, Miles from Ordinary, This Girl Is Different, Karma, Bluefish, The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love, Notes on a Near-Life Experience
| Author | Maria Padian |
| ISBN | 0375865799 |
This is a hilarious and heartbreaking story of two teen girls and the summer when everything changes for them. Both Henry and Eva are New Jersey natives and excellent athletes: Henry's a master on the tennis court and Eva is a graceful ballerina. When opportunity knocks for both of them the summer before...
| Author | Kirsten Hubbard |
| ISBN | 0385739354 |
It's hard finding beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming, but 14-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it's not her mother's pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild-girl Mandarin Ramey: 17, shameless and utterly carefree. Grace would give...
| Author | Ashley Hope Pérez |
| ISBN | 0761361553 |
Marissa has smarts and plenty of promise, but she's marooned in a broken-down Houston neighborhood--and in a Mexican immigrant family where making ends meet matters much more than making it to college. When her home life becomes unbearable, Marissa seeks comfort elsewhere--and suddenly neither...
| Author | Carol Lynch Williams |
| ISBN | 0312555121 |
Thirteen-year-old Lacey wakes to a beautiful summer morning excited to begin her new job at the library, just as her mother is supposed to start work at the grocery store. Lacey hopes that her mother's ghosts have finally been laid to rest; after all, she seems so much better these days, and they really...
| Author | J.J. Johnson |
| ISBN | 1561455784 |
What happens when a girl, homeschooled by her counterculture mother, decides to spend her senior year in public school? First friendship, first love--and first encounters with the complexities of authority and responsibility.
Evie is different. Not just her upbringing--though that's certainly...
| Author | Cathy Ostlere |
| ISBN | 1595143386 |
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi is gunned down by two Sikh bodyguards. The murder sparks riots in Delhi and for three days Sikh families are targeted and killed in retribution for the Prime Minister’s death. It is into this chaos that sixteen-year-old Maya and her Sikh father, Amar, arrive from...
| Author | Pat Schmatz |
| ISBN | 0763653349 |
Travis is missing his old home in the country, and he’s missing his old hound, Rosco. Now there’s just the cramped place he shares with his alcoholic grandpa, a new school, and the dreaded routine of school. But that’s before Travis meets Mr. McQueen, who doesn’t take "pass" for an answer—a...
| Author | Bonnie Shimko |
| ISBN | 0374361312 |
“All a person needs in life is one true friend.â€
So says Grandpa Thomas, the only member of Amelia’s family who cares about her one bit. That true friend finally arrives when Fancy Nelson, the first Negro kid Amelia has ever seen in person, walks into her fourth grade classroom....
| Author | Lauren Tarshis |
| ISBN | 0803733216 |
Emma-Jean is experiencing something new and unsettling, but not entirely unpleasant. It?s a fluttering in her heart when she imagines herself asking Will to the seventh-grade dance. Her best friend Colleen is worried that Will might laugh if Emma-Jean invites him. After all, Emma-Jean is a different...
| Author | Olivia Birdsall |
| ISBN | 0385733704 |
Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian...
| Author | Margarita Engle |
| ISBN | 0805092404 |
Quebrado has been traded from pirate ship to ship in the Caribbean Sea for as long as he can remember. The sailors he toils under call him el quebrado--half islander, half outsider, a broken one. Now the pirate captain Bernardino de Talavera uses Quebrado as a translator to help navigate the worlds and...
It's senior year and Charlotte Locke has just transferred to a new high school. With no friends, a terrible math SAT score, and looming college application deadlines, the future starts to seem like a black hole.
Then Amanda enters her orbit like a hot-pink meteor, offering Charlotte a ticket...
| Author | Jo Knowles |
| ISBN | 0805092072 |
Bean (née Pearl) and Henry, misfits and best friends, have the strangest mothers in town. Henry’s mom Sally never leaves the house. Bean’s mom Lexie, if she is home, is likely nursing a hangover or venting to her friend Claire about Bean’s beloved grandfather Gus, the third member of their sunny...
| Author | Rick Detorie |
| ISBN | 1606841491 |
A book for the Wimpy Kid who has grown into a Wimpy Teen
Larkin Pace desperately wants a new camcorder. How else is he going to become the next great filmmaker? But his dad won’t give him any money, his sister is determined to make his life miserable, and his nemesis Dalton Cooke is trying to...
| Author | Lisa Yee |
| ISBN | 0545122767 |
Lisa Yee returns to her core strength in older middle-grade fiction and the characters that made her famous in this "Diary of a Wimpy Trekkie." Entering 7th grade is no big deal for Marley Sandelski: Same old boring classes, same old boring life. The only thing he has to look forward to is the upcoming Star...
| Author | Traci L. Jones |
| ISBN | 0374369143 |
Seventh-grader Serena Shaw is trying to keep up at school while rehearsing for the lead role in the spring musical and dealing with a father so "blue" he is nearly catatonic. With the aid of a not-so-secret admirer as well as a growing sense of self-confidence, she faces the challenges of caring for herself...
| Author | Gloria Whelan |
| ISBN | 0061255459 |
Kate Tapert sees her life in paintings. She makes sense of the world around her by relating it to what she adores—art. Armed with a suitcase, some canvases, and a scholarship to art school in Detroit, Kate is ready to leave home and fully immerse herself in painting. Sounds like heaven. All Kate needs...
| Author | Rosanne Parry |
| ISBN | 0375961968 |
The author of Heart of a Shepherd offers another sensitive portrayal of military families, this time stationed abroad, in the city of Berlin at that historic time just after the Wall came down.
When 13-year-old Jody and her friends save a badly beaten Russian soldier from drowning, they put...
| Author | P.J. Converse |
| ISBN | 0061575143 |
He is shy. Unassuming. Inexperienced.
She is Subway Girl. Cool. Unattainable.
From the moment he sees her on a Hong Kong subway, Simon is intrigued by Amy, but he doesn't have the nerve to talk to her. When he finally works up the courage, he realizes he can't. Because Amy doesn't speak...
| Author | Sara Bennett Wealer |
| ISBN | 0061827622 |
What if your worst enemy turned out to be the best friend you ever had?
Meet Brooke: Popular, powerful and hating every minute of it, she’s the “It” girl at Douglas High in Lake Champion, Minnesota. Her real ambition? Using her operatic mezzo as a ticket back to NYC, where her family lived...
| Author | Helen Landalf |
| ISBN | 0547519737 |
Stevie Calhoun knows how to take care of herself. It’s not like her mom hasn’t disappeared before. So why is Aunt Mindy making such a big deal of it now? It’s not like Mom’s really doing meth. Stevie makes sure of that. Whatever. She’ll go home with Aunt Mindy if it will keep her from calling Child...
| Author | Pete Hautman |
| ISBN | 0545240751 |
A funny, clear-eyed view of the realities of teenage love from National Book Award winner Pete Hautman. Jen and Wes do not "meet cute." They do not fall in love at first sight. They do not swoon with scorching desire. They do not believe that they are instant soul mates destined to be together forever. This...
| Author | Martyn Bedford |
| ISBN | 0385739907 |
I feel pretty bad giving this book such a low rating, so once I've had more time to think about it I will probably bump it up, at most, a star.
I read the Skinjacker trilogy earlier this year, so the big "reveal" as to why Alex's psyche was in Flip's body seemed derived. It's like every time something...
Rachel Spinelli Punched Me in the Face
| Author | Paul Acampora |
| ISBN | 1596435488 |
Zachary's mom just up and disappeared from their home in Copper Lake, Colorado. The good news is that Zachary and his dad are trying to move on, and Falls, Connecticut is just the place for a fresh start. With the help of a new friend, Rachel, and her brother Teddy, Zachary is learning about new beginnings,...
