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BOOK LISTS: Form Follows Function-It tells the story.

POETRY/VERSE
Learning to Swim: A Memoir by Ann Warren Turner
A series of poems convey the feelings of a young girl whose sense of joy and security at the family's summer house is shattered when an older boy who lives nearby sexually abuses her.

CrashBoomLove by Juan Felipe Herrera
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.

Love that Dog by Sharon Creech
A young student, who comes to love poetry through a personal understanding of what different famous poems mean to him, and an appearance at his school by Walter Dean Myers, surprises himself by writing his own inspired poem.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
In a series of poems, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

Stop Pretending: What Happened When my Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Somes
A younger sister has a difficult time adjusting to life after her older sister has a mental breakdown.

Split Image by Mel Glenn
A series of poems reflect the thoughts and feelings of various people--students, the librarian, parents, the principal, and others--about the seemingly perfect Laura Li and her life inside and out of Tower High School.

Foreign Exchange: A Mystery in Poems by Mel Glenn
A mystery story told in free verse poems describes the reactions of the residents of a rural town and some city visitors when a white teenage girl, a town resident, is murdered, and one of the visiting city students, a young Afro-American man, is accused of her murder.

What my Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Somes
A series of poems reflect the thoughts and feelings of Sophie, a fifteen-year-old-girl, as she describes her relationships with a series of boys and as she searches for Mr. Right.

Make Lemonade and True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolf
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.

LETTERS
Letters from the Inside by John Marsden
The relationship between two teenage girls who become acquainted through letters intensifies as their correspondence reveals some of the terrible problems of their lives.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
A series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the coming-of-age trials of a high-schooler named Charlie.

Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty
An epistolary novel uses letters written between teenage friends, refrigerator notes from a crazy mother, and epistles that express the narrator's own internal feelings of self-doubt to weave this bittersweet coming of age story.

EMAIL
From E to You by Chris d'Lacey
Though reluctant to correspond at first, Guy and Annabelle become fast cyber-friends, but their budding relationship creates havoc when they start to speculate about what caused the feud between their fathers.

ChaseR by Michael J. Rosen
When his parents decide to move to an old house in the country, Chase uses email to his friends back in Columbus, Ohio, and to his sister in college to help him deal with cicadas, deer hunters, and other changes in his life.

Love, Sara by Mary Beth Lundgren
In a series of e-mails and journal entries Sara, a high school junior with a history of sexual abuse and foster home care, reveals her feelings about herself and two friends who are headed for destruction.

Snail Mail No More by Paula Danziger
Now that they live in different cities, thirteen-year-old Tara and Elizabeth use email to talk about everything that is occuring in their lives and to try to maintain their closeness as they face big challenges.

JOURNAL/DIARY

The Amazing and Death Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman by Paul Zindel
Fifteen-year-old Eugene Dingman records in his personal diary his summer spent as a waiter in a hotel in the Adirondacks, learning to cope with rejection from the girl he has a crush on as well as from his own father.

Alice, I Think by Susan Juby
The title character copes with her personal and social problems by confronting them in her diary.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend
Follows the ups and downs of one British teenager's life in diary form.

The Secret Diary of Anne Boley by Robin Maxwell
The young queen Elizabeth ascends to the throne with a bankrupt treasury, myriad offers of marriage, and the love of her Master of Horse, Robert Dudley. As Elizabeth makes the first momentous decisions of her reign, she is forever changed by the truths she discovers in the pages of her mother's diary.

Catherine Called Birdy by Cushman, Karen
The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life, particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.

Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Margaret Peterson Haddix
In the journal she is keeping for English class, sixteen-year-old Tish chronicles the changes in her life when her abusive father returns home after a two-year absence.

Letters to Julia by Barbara Ware Holmes
In her journal, chapters of the novel she is writing, and letters to a New York editor who has befriended her, a fifteen-year-old budding author reveals her journey of self-discovery in the midst of a dysfunctional family.

The Year Without Michael by Susan Beth Pffefer
The changes sixteen-year-old Jody's parents, sister, and herself go through over a year's time are seen through Jody's eyes as they try to cope with her fourteen-year-old brother's disappearance.

A Hand Full of Stars by Rafik Schami
Amid the turmoil of modern Damascus, one teenage boy finds his political voice when he and his friends begin a subversive underground newspaper.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Gloeckner, Phoebe
Sixteen-year-old Caitlin O'Conner keeps a six-month diary in which she records the day-to-day events of her life as well as her struggles to understand herself and God's plan for her future.

Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition by Caroline Alexander
A diary of an astute male cat, "Mrs. Chippy," documents his journey to Antartica with human associate Harry "Chippy" McNeish.

Go Ask Alice by Various
A novel in diary form of a fifteen-year-old girl's journey from a secure middle class family to the nightmare world of drug addiction, hustlers, and dealers.

REAL DIARIES
Zlata's Diary by Zlata Filipovic
Ten-year-old Croatian Filipovic's graphic, firsthand account of life in embattled Sarajevo.

Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Born in 1929, Anne Frank received a blank diary on her 13th birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Her detailed personal entries chronicle 25 trying months in hiding.

Keeping Secrets: the Girlhood Diaries of Seven Women Writers by Mary Lyons
Read the girlhood diaries of the following seven women writers: Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Forten, Sarah Jane Foster, Kate Chopin, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Ida B. Wells, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

War Journal of an Innocent Soldier by John Bassett
In this memoir, impressively low-key and matter-of-fact, the author recalls his experiences as a GI in Europe during the latter part of WW II.

The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889 by Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas
This relays the voice of Southern white women chafing against slavery, male-dominated institutions, and the spiritual and material poverty of the postwar South...a real Scarlett O'Hara, with grit.

Back on the Road: A Journey in Latin America by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
The Cuban revolutionary describes his travels and how his observations informed his politics.