The Simple Gift
10 best books like The Simple Gift (Steven Herrick): Purple Daze, Joel and Cat Set the Story Straight, Deadly, Unna?, When You Wake and Find Me Gone, Just Macbeth, One Would Think the Deep, Worlds Afire, Displacement, Because of You, The Apprentice's Masterpiece: A Story of Medieval Spain
| Author | Sherry Shahan |
| ISBN | 0762440716 |
Purple Daze is a young adult novel set in suburban Los Angeles in 1965. Six high school students share their experiences and feelings in interconnected free verse and traditional poems about war, feminism, riots, love, racism, rock 'n' roll, high school, and friendship.Although there have been verse...
Joel and Cat Set the Story Straight is two weeks in the life of Joel Hedges and Cat Davis. Joel would prefer to get through his final year of high school without Cat Davis or his mother's faux Spanish boyfriend and just hang-out with his best-friend Luke. Cat Davis has an annoying best-friend, and even more...
| Author | Phillip Gwynne |
| ISBN | 0141300493 |
'Deadly, unna?' He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to...
| Author | Maureen McCarthy |
| ISBN | 0143000314 |
So how did you meet him? I hear you asking.
Was it love at first sight? Was he a fellow teacher? Did you meet in a pub?
This might be hard to believe, but the first time I looked into your father's eyes, he was holding a gun to my head.
But first, let me explain . . .
Everything is...
Take one Shakespearean tragedy: Macbeth. Add Andy, Danny and Lisa - the Just trio, whose madcap exploits have already delighted hundreds of thousands of readers for the last ten years. Mix them all together to create one of the most hilarious, most dramatic, moving stories of love, Whizz Fizz, witches,...
| Author | Claire Zorn |
| ISBN | 0702253944 |
It’s 1997 and seventeen-year-old Sam is mourning the sudden loss of his mum …
Sam has always had things going on in his head that no one else understands, even his mum. And now she’s dead, it’s worse than ever.
With nothing but his skateboard and a few belongings in a garbage bag,...
| Author | Paul B. Janeczko |
| ISBN | 0763622354 |
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...
| Author | Thalia Chaltas |
| ISBN | 0670011991 |
Home is supposed to be a place you belong. It's supposed to be parents who are there and siblings who bug you and a life that feels comfortable. It's not supposed to be an absentee mother or a drowned sister. But that's Vera's reality, and she can't stand it anymore. So she runs. She ends up in an old mining...
| Author | Pip Harry |
| ISBN | 0702259772 |
Tiny is homeless. Nola has everything she could ask for. They meet when Nola is forced into volunteer work for the writers’ group at the homeless shelter where Tiny is staying, and at first it seems impossible that two people who are so different could ever be friends. But despite her initial prejudice,...
| Author | Melanie Little |
| ISBN | 1554511178 |
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,...
| Author | Susan Taylor Brown |
| ISBN | 1582461805 |
When her mom runs away from home, Rachel is left behind with her emotionally distant father and many questions she cannot answer. Over time, she learns the truth about her mom. But it's only when she learns the truth about her dad, the rock- immoveable and always there for her to lean on-that Rachel can...
| Author | Ron Koertge |
| ISBN | 0763617423 |
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...
| Author | Alison Stewart |
| ISBN | 0143206540 |
She has to escape.
But who else is out there?
And can anyone survive days like this?
I want to go back to the days when life made sense. The days before our parents became strange; before the warming ate away at all the living things in the world; before The Committee and their Blacktroopers....
What do you do when you’ve just lost three of your best mates?
Who do you turn to when your life is suddenly bound to a wheelchair?
Dan has dodged the Reaper again. If he were a cat, five of his nine lives would be gone—when his mates didn’t even get second chances. He’s still grieving...
| Author | Barry Jonsberg |
| ISBN | 1742373852 |
The boy sat in the branches of the fifth tree on the left, his scuffed boots dangling. Leah turned her eyes up. His face was heavily freckled, his eyes large, brown and almond-shaped. His hair stuck out at wild angles. 'Hello,' she said.
Sixteen-year-old Carly is interviewing Leah Cartwright...
| Author | Margaret Wild |
| ISBN | 0689871171 |
Do not get to know me. Do not ask me out. Do not love me. Be warned!Jinx doesn't start out as Jinx -- at first she's dull, safe, boring Jen. Jen who always hands her homework in on time, Jen who never stays out late, Jen who can always be counted on. When Jen's first boyfriend dies, she thinks she's unlucky...until...
| Author | Scott Monk |
| ISBN | 1741660122 |
Brett Dalton is filled with hate and not afraid of a fight, but when he is sent to The Farm, his only opponent is himself. Brett Dalton is a tough guy—hardened, angry, uncaring, and always ready to use his fists. When the world hates you, you might as well hate it back. But when Brett is busted by the...
| Author | Emma Cameron |
| ISBN | 0763664049 |
To be honest with you, I wasn't that keen to read Cinnamon Rain, a new Aussie YA title from debut author Emma Cameron. For starters, I found the title "Cinnamon Rain" perplexing as it doesn't really conjure up anything particularly visually and/or emotionally impressive (or even familiar) in terms...
Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal
| Author | Margarita Engle |
| ISBN | 0544109414 |
One hundred years ago, the world celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, which connected the world’s two largest oceans and signaled America’s emergence as a global superpower. It was a miracle, this path of water where a mountain had stood—and creating a miracle is no easy thing. Thousands...
| Author | Kirsten Krauth |
| ISBN | 1742584950 |
just_a_girl tears into the fabric of contemporary culture. A Puberty Blues for the digital age, a Lolita with a webcam, it’s what happens when young girls are forced to grow up too fast. Or never get the chance to grow up at all.
Layla is only 14. She cruises online. She catches trains to meet...
| Author | Tara June Winch |
| ISBN | 0702235210 |
An Alternate Cover Edition of this ISBN can be found here.
In 2006, Tara June Winch’s startling debut Swallow the Air was published to acclaim. Its poetic yet visceral style announced the arrival afresh and exciting new talent. This 10th anniversary edition celebrates its important contribution...
| Author | Kate O'Donnell |
| ISBN | 0702259829 |
Seventeen-year-old Adelaide is sick of being expected to succeed on other people’s terms. She knows she just has to stick it out at school for one more year and then she’ll be free. Instead, she runs away from her fancy boarding school back to her sleepy hometown to read and dream.
But there...
