Best Coming of Age Stories

Top 10 Best Coming of Age Stories : Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Princess Academy, Tuck Everlasting, A Separate Peace, Harry Potter Series Box Set, I Capture the Castle, The Graveyard Book, A Little Princess, The Chosen, David Copperfield

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
AuthorJudy Blume
ISBN0689841582
Margaret Simon, almost twelve, likes long hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain, and things that are pink. She’s just moved from New York City to Farbook, New Jersey, and is anxious to fit in with her new friends—Nancy, Gretchen, and Janie. When they form a secret club to talk about private subjects like...
Princess Academy
AuthorShannon Hale
ISBN1599900734
Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of...
Tuck Everlasting
AuthorNatalie Babbitt
ISBN0374480095
Doomed to - or blessed with - eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less...
A Separate Peace
AuthorJohn Knowles
ISBN0743253973
An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.

Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World...
Harry Potter Series Box Set
AuthorJ.K. Rowling
ISBN0545044251
I had removed this review, which violates Article 2 of the Terms of Use:You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal.Looking...
I Capture the Castle
AuthorDodie Smith
ISBN0312181108
Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family. By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in...
The Graveyard Book
AuthorNeil Gaiman
ISBN0060530928
Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their timely ghostly teachings-like the ability to...
A Little Princess
AuthorFrances Hodgson Burnett
ISBN0142437018
Sara Crewe, an exceptionally intelligent and imaginative student at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies, is devastated when her adored, indulgent father dies. Now penniless and banished to a room in the attic, Sara is demeaned, abused, and forced to work as a servant. How this resourceful...
The Chosen
AuthorChaim Potok
ISBN0449213447
Danny Saunders en Reuven Malter groeien in de jaren veertig van de vorige eeuw op in een gemeenschap van chassidische joden in New York. Danny is orthodox opgevoed en voorbestemd zijn vader op te volgen als rabbijn. Het milieu waarin zijn vriend Reuven opgroeit, is veel moderner. Steeds meer wordt Danny...
David Copperfield
AuthorCharles Dickens
David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant,...
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
AuthorMaya Angelou
ISBN0553279378
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many...
AuthorJanet Fitch
ISBN0316182540
Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its...
A Wizard of Earthsea
AuthorUrsula K. Le Guin
ISBN0553383043
”The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.”


The Folio Society edition is superbly illustrated by David Lupton.

The boy is born on the island of Gont in the archipelago of Earthsea. This is a world infused with magic. Not everyone can control this magic, but those...
Black Swan Green
AuthorDavid Mitchell
ISBN0812974018
From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying...
It's Kind of a Funny Story
AuthorNed Vizzini
Ambitious New York City teenager Craig Gilner is determined to succeed at life - which means getting into the right high school to get into the right job. But once Craig aces his way into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School, the pressure becomes unbearable. He stops eating and sleeping...
American Born Chinese
AuthorGene Luen Yang
ISBN1596431520
All Jin Wang wants is to fit in. When his family moves to a new neighborhood, he suddenly finds that he's the only Chinese American student at his school. Jocks and bullies pick on him constantly, and he has hardly any friends. Then, to make matters worse, he falls in love with an all-American girl...

Born...
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
AuthorJeanette Winterson
Alternate cover edition for 9780802135162

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to...
Bridge to Terabithia
AuthorKatherine Paterson
Jess Aarons' greatest ambition is to be the fastest runner in his grade. He's been practicing all summer and can't wait to see his classmates' faces when he beats them all. But on the first day of school, a new girl boldly crosses over to the boys' side and outruns everyone.

That's not a very promising...
The Sword in the Stone
AuthorT.H. White
"Learn. That is the only thing that never fails."--Merlyn the Wizard

Before there was a famous king named Arthur, there was a curious boy named Wart and a kind old wizard named Merlyn. Transformed by Merlyn into the forms of his fantasy, Wart learns the value of history from a snake, of education...
Dandelion Wine
AuthorRay Bradbury
ISBN0671037706
The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in...
The Prince of Tides
AuthorPat Conroy
ISBN0553381547
PAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary...
The Long Winter
AuthorLaura Ingalls Wilder
ISBN0060885424
On the empty winter prairie, gray clouds to the northwest meant only one thing: a blizzard was seconds away. The first blizzard came in October. It snowed almost without stopping until April. The temperature dropped to forty below. Snow reached the roof-tops. And no trains could get through with food...
My Ántonia
AuthorWilla Cather
ISBN1583485090
Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride,...
Old Yeller
AuthorFred Gipson
ISBN0060935472
At first, Travis couldn't stand the sight of Old Yeller.

The stray dog was ugly, and a thieving rascal, too. But he sure was clever, and a smart dog could be a big help on the wild Texas frontier, especially with Papa away on a long cattle drive up to Abilene.

Strong and courageous, Old Yeller...
The Long Walk
AuthorRichard Bachman
ISBN0451196716
If this book does not make you feel physical pain, I don't know what will.

This isn't a book about killer clowns or haunted hotels. It's not a Hunger Games type of book, despite the "game show" element of the Long Walk, nor is it a world attached to any tower, Dark or not. This book is in-your-face...
AuthorRichard Adams
Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN13 9780380395866 here.

Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction...
The Chocolate War
AuthorRobert Cormier
ISBN0375829873
Jerry Renault ponders the question on the poster in his locker: Do I dare disturb the universe? Refusing to sell chocolates in the annual Trinity school fund-raiser may not seem like a radical thing to do. But when Jerry challenges a secret school society called The Vigils, his defiant act turns into...
AuthorHerman Raucher
ISBN0440183480
He had always intended to come back, to see the island again. But the opportunity had never quite presented itself. This time, however, with a break in his schedule and with events moving remarkably in his favor, he had driven far up the New England coast to see if the magic still prevailed.

I've...
River in the Sea
AuthorTina Boscha
ISBN1466292075
At fifteen, Leen De Graaf likes everything she shouldn't: smoking cigarettes, wearing red lipstick, driving illegally, and working in the fields. It seems the only thing she shares with her fellow Dutchmen is a fear of the German soldiers stationed nearby and a frantic wish for the war to end. When a...
Where the Crawdads Sing
AuthorDelia Owens
ISBN0735219117
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has...
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
AuthorMildred D. Taylor
Why is the land so important to Cassie's family? It takes the events of one turbulent year—the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she's black—to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family's lifeblood. It...
Rubyfruit Jungle
AuthorRita Mae Brown
ISBN0553146963
I read this book the year it was published. I was a young woman of 21, and it was during a time when it was still considered shocking, by most of mainstream straight America,to be gay. My sister had recently come out to me, and my head was spinning. We were very close, and she was much older. Her "roommate" of...
Something Wicked This Way Comes
AuthorRay Bradbury
ISBN0380729407
A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show...
A Prayer for Owen Meany
AuthorJohn Irving
ISBN0552135399
Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying....
Jude the Obscure
AuthorThomas Hardy
ISBN0486452433


i have just discovered betterbooktitles.com, so i am including this, but it is a total spoiler, so be warned.

(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)].
The World According to Garp
AuthorJohn Irving
ISBN0345915593
This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet...
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