V.E. Wolff
Summary: Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to.
Virginia Euwer Wolff
Summary: In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother of two. Written in 66 chapters, with text lines that break at natural speaking phrases
Helen Frost
Summary: Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they found home again.
Nikki Grimes
Summary: While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.
One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
Sonya Sones
Summary: Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.
What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know
Sonya Sones
Artistic fourteen-year-old Robin Murphy is so unpopular at high school that his name is slang for "loser," so when he begins dating the beautiful and popular Sophie, her reputation plummets
Margaret Wild
Summary: With the help of her understanding mother and a close friend, Jen eventually outgrows her nickname, Jinx, and deals with the deaths of two boys with whom she had been involved.
CrashBoomLove: a novel in verse
Juan Felipe Herrera
Summary: After his father leaves home, sixteen-year-old Cesar Garcia lives with his mother and struggles through the painful experiences of growing up as a Mexican American high school student.
Robert Cormier
Summary: A series of vignettes in free verse in which the writer reminisces about his life as a twelve-year-old boy living in a small town during the hot summer of 1938.
Lisa Ann Sandell
Summary: In fifth-century Britain, nine years after the destruction of their home on the island of Shalott brings her to live with her father and brothers in the military encampments of Arthur's army, seventeen-year-old Elaine describes her changing perceptions of war and the people around her as she becomes increasingly involved in the bitter struggle against the invading Saxons.
Jaime Adoff
In the Florida projects, sixteen-year-old Jayson struggles with the harsh realities of his life which include an abusive mother, a drug-addicted father, and not fitting in at his predominately white school, and bring him to the brink of suicide.
Ellen Hopkins
Kristina Georgia Snow's life is turned upside-down, when she visits her absentee father, gets turned on to the drug "crank", becomes addicted, and is lead down a desperate path that threatens her mind, soul, and her life.
Ellen Hopkins
Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer where she temporarily escapes her alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she returns home.
Ellen Hopkins
Kristina is determined to break her addiction to drugs in order to keep her newborn child; but when she fails and the pull becomes too strong, her greatest fears are quickly realized.
Ellen Hopkins
Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada's Aspen Springs mental hospital after each has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.
Patricia McCormick
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.