Chick Lit

Books for Girls in Grades 6-8

What Do Girls Want?

• Romance

• Girl Power

• Adventure

• Mystery

• Real Life Problems

• Sad Stories

Romance

Do you hear this statement from your girls?

I want a book like Twilight.

Romance

• Beastly by Alex Flinn• HarperTeen,2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-087416-2• Interest Level: YA • A modern retelling of "Beauty and the Beast"

from the point of view of the Beast, a vain Manhattan private school student, who is turned into a monster and must find true love before he can return to his human form.

Romance

• Lily Dale : Awakening • By Wendy Corsi Staub• Walker, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-9654-7• Interest Level: YA

• When seventeen-year-old Calla's mother suddenly dies, she goes to stay with her psychic grandmother in Lily Dale, she discovers secrets about her practical, down-to-earth mother, and realizes that she herself may also have some psychic abilities.

Romance

• Avalon High • By Meg Cabot• Harper Collins, p2006• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-075587-4• Interest Level: YA

• Having moved to Annapolis, Maryland, with her medievalist parents, high school junior Ellie enrolls at Avalon High School where several students may or may not be reincarnations of King Arthur and his court.

Romance

• A Kiss in Time • By Alex Flinn• HarperTeen, 2009• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-087419-3

• Interest Level: YA

• Sixteen-year-old Princess Talia persuades Jack, the modern-day American who kissed her awake after a three-hundred-year sleep, to take her to his Miami home, where she hopes to win his love before the witch who cursed her can spirit her away.

Romance

• The Breakup Bible : a Novel • By Melissa Kantor• Publisher: Hyperion, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-7868-0962-2• Interest Level: YA • After a breakup with her boyfriend, school

newspaper editor Jen Lewis receives a book from her grandmother that provides basic commandments for getting over an ex and sets out to recover from the loss of the romance.

Romance

• The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman

by Louise Plummer.• Publisher: Laurel-Leaf, 1997• ISBN-13: 978-0-440-22704-5• Interest Level: YA

• Seventeen-year-old Kate hopes for romance

when her older brother's friend Richard comes to stay at their house during Christmas vacation.

Romance

• Partly cloudy : Poems of Love and Longing

• By Gary Soto• Publisher: Harcourt, 2009, • ISBN-13: 978-0-15-206301-6

• Interest Level: YA

• A humorous collection of poetry told from the point of view of both boys and girls who share their emotions about first loves, crushes, and broken hearts.

Romance

• Dairy Queen • by Catherine Gilbert Murdock• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 2006• ISBN-13: 978-0-618-86335-8• Interest Level: YA

• After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.

Romance

• The Off Season • by Catherine Gilbert Murdock• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-618-68695-7• Interest Level: YA • Sequel to: Dairy queen. High school junior D. J.

Schwenk staggers under the weight of caring for her badly injured brother, her responsibilities on the dairy farm, a changing relationship with her friend Brian and her own athletic aspirations.

Girl Power

• No Cream Puffs • By Karen Day• Wendy Lamb Books, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-375-83775-3• Interest Level: 5-8

• When twelve-year-old Madison, who loves to play baseball, decides to play in her town's baseball league, she never envisions the uproar it causes when she becomes the first girl to join the boys league.

Girl Power

• Basketball (Or Something Like It) • by Nora Raleigh Baskin.• Publisher: HarperTrophy, 2005• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-059612-5• Interest Level: 3-6 • Hank, Nathan, Jeremy, and Anabel deal with the

realities of middle school basketball, including family pressure, a series of coaches with very different personalities and agendas, and what it means to be a team--and a friend.

Girl Power

• Outside Beauty • By Cynthia Kadohata• Atheneum Books for Young

Readers, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-689-86575-6• Interest Level: YA• • Thirteen-year-old Shelby and her three sisters must go

to live with their respective fathers while their mother, who has trained them to rely on their looks, recovers from a car accident that scarred her face.

Girl Power

• Title: Breathing Soccer • By Debbie Spring• Thistledown Press, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-1-897235-42-3• Interest Level: 5-8• Lisa, a young girl who suffers from asthma, finds

inspiration in the performance of Olympic rower Silken Laumann and trains hard to overcome her condition and be a great soccer player.

Girl Power

• The Hunger Games • By Suzanne Collins• Scholastic Press, p2008, • ISBN-13: 978-0-439-02348-1• Interest Level: YA

• Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen accidentally becomes a contender in the annual Hunger Games, a grave competition hosted by the Capitol where young boys and girls are pitted against one another in a televised fight to the death.

Girl Power

• Throwing Like a Girl • By Weezie Kerr Mackey• Marshall Cavendish, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-7614-5342-0

Interest Level: YA

• After moving from Chicago to Dallas in the spring of her sophomore year, fifteen-year-old Ella finds that joining the softball team at her private school not only helps her make friends, it also provides unexpected opportunities to learn and grow.

Girl Power

• Palace of Mirrors • By Margaret Peterson Haddix• Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-1-41693-915-3

Interest Level: YA

• Fourteen-year-old Cecilia has always known she is the true princess of Suala, but when she and her best friend, Harper, decide to speed up her ascendancy to the throne, they find danger and many imposters who challenge her claim.

Girl Power

• Uglies • By Scott Westerfeld• Simon Pulse, 2005• ISBN-13: 978-0-689-86538-1

Interest Level: YA

• Notes: Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.

Girl Power

• My So-Called Family • By Courtney Sheinmel• Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-1-41695-785-0

Interest Level: 5-8

• Leah, who was conceived through a donor bank, decides that even though she loves her mother, stepfather, and stepbrother, she wants to find out if she has any other siblings, and sets out to investigate without telling anyone what she is doing.

Adventure

• Brothers, Boyfriends, and Other Criminal Minds • by April Lurie• Delacorte Press, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-385-73124-9

Interest Level: YA

• While living on the same block as several members of the Mafia does have the advantage of a lower crime rate, fourteen-year-old April and her brother find there are times when it is also a major disadvantage.

Adventure

• Hope was Here • By Joan Bauer.• G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2000• ISBN-13: 978-0-399-23142-1• Interest Level: YA

• When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.

Adventure

• Rules of the Road • By Joan Bauer• Putman's,1998• ISBN-13: 978-0-399-23140-7• Interest Level: YA • Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly

owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father.

Adventure

• Huge : a Novel • By Sasha Paley.• Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-1-41693-517-9

Interest Level: YA

• Thrown together as roommates at a "fat camp," Wilhelmina and April have nothing in common until they are both humiliated by the same person.

Adventure

• Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters

• By Lesley M. M. Blume• Yearling, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-440-42110-8

Interest Level: 3-6

• Eleven-year-old Cornelia S. Englehart, a lonely daughter of famous pianists who lives in New York City, learns about language and life from a new elderly neighbor who shares stories about the fabulous adventures she and her sisters had while traveling around the world.

Adventure

• Do-Over • By Christine Hurley Deriso• Yearling, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-440-42119-1• Interest Level: 3-6

• Seventh-grader Elsa moves to a new town and starts a new school where with the help of her recently deceased mother and a magic locket allows her to redo the last ten seconds of any situation.

Adventure

• Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy

• By L. A. Meyer• Harcourt, 2002• ISBN-13: 978-0-15-216731-8• Interest Level: YA

• Reduced to begging and thievery in the streets of London, a thirteen-year-old orphan disguises herself as a boy and connives her way onto a British warship set for high sea adventure in search of pirates.

Adventure

• Never mind! : a Twin Novel • By Avi, Rachel Vail• Harper Trophy, 2005• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-054316-7 • Interest Level: 5-8

• Twelve-year-old New York City twins Meg and Edward have nothing in common, so they are just as shocked as everyone else when Meg's hopes for popularity and Edward's mischievous schemes coincidentally collide in a hilarious showdown.

Adventure

• Switched • By Jessica Wollman• Delacorte Press, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-385-73396-0• Interest Level: YA

• Laura and Willa, born the same night seventeen years ago on opposite sides of Darien, Connecticut, are both unhappy with their lives and when they discover they look remarkably alike, they decide to try out one another's lives for four months.

Adventure

• Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life • By Wendy Mass• Little, Brown, 2006• ISBN-13: 978-0-316-05829-2

• Interest Level: 5-8• Just before his thirteenth birthday, Jeremy Fink

receives a keyless locked box--set aside by his father before his death five years earlier--that purportedly contains the meaning of life.

Adventure

• The problem with Paradise • By Lesley Dahl• Publisher: Yearling, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-440-23950-5• Interest Level: 5-8

• Fourteen-year-old Casey dreads leaving her friends and boyfriend to spend a boring summer on a Caribbean island with her naturalist father, stepmother, and brothers, but she has some life-changing experiences that include learning to sail, helping with turtle conservation, surviving storms, and romance.

Real Life

• Yankee Girl • by Mary Ann Rodman.• Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004• ISBN-13: 978-0-374-38661-0 • Interest Level: 5-8

• When her FBI-agent father is transferred to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, eleven-year-old Alice wants to be popular but also wants to reach out to the one black girl in her class in a newly-integrated school.

Real Life

• Waiting for Normal • By Leslie Connor• Katherine Tegen Books, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-089088-9 • Interest Level: 5-8

• Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of New York.

Real Life

• Izzy, Willy-Nilly • by Cynthia Voigt.• Simon Pulse, 2005• ISBN-13: 978-1-41690-339-0

• Interest Level: 5-8• A car accident causes fifteen-year-old Izzy to

lose one leg and face the need to start building a new life as an amputee.

Real Life

• Malibu Carmie • By Leah Komaiko• Random House Children's Books,

2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-440-42014-9

Interest Level: YA

• When thirteen-year-old Carmie discovers that her divorced mother, who suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, was once a well-know Malibu surfer, she re-evaluates the way she views her mother and herself.

Real Life

• Dicey's song • By Cynthia Voigt.• Atheneum, p1982, c1982• ISBN-13: 978-0-689-30944-1• Interest Level: 5-8

• Sequel to: Homecoming. Now that the four abandoned Tillerman children are settled in with their grandmother, Dicey finds that their new beginnings require love, trust, humor, and courage.

Real Life

• Dear Julia • By Amy Bronwen Zemser• Greenwillow Books, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-029458-8 • Interest Level: YA • Shy sixteen-year-old Elaine has long dreamed of

being the next Julia Child, to the dismay of her feminist mother, but when her first friend, the outrageous Lucida Sans, convinces Elaine to enter a cooking contest, anything could happen.

Real Life

• Chasing Normal • By Lisa Papademetriou• Hyperion Books for Children, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-1-42310-340-0• Interest Level: 5-8• • When her mean, grouchy grandmother in Texas

has a heart attack and she and father go to help, twelve-year-old Mieka meets her cousins' family and wishes for their "normal" type of life.

Real Life

• As if being 12 3/4 isn't bad enough, my mother is running for president! • By Donna Gephart• Delacorte Press, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-0-385-73481-3 • Interest Level: 3-6• Preparing for spelling bees, having a secret admirer, and

waiting for her chest size to catch up with her enormous feet are pressure enough, but twelve-year-old Vanessa must also deal with loneliness and very real fears as her mother, Florida's governor, runs for President of the United States.

Real Life

• BFF : Best Friends Forever : Two Novels • By Judy Blume• Delacorte Press, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-385-73407-3• Interest Level: 5-8

• Two novels by Judy Blume including "Just as Long as We're Together," in which Stephanie's relationship with her best friend, Rachel, changes during her first year in junior high; and "Here's to You, Rachel Robinson," in which Rachel's life is disrupted when her brother Charles is expelled from boarding school and returns home.

Real Life

• Beauty shop for rent– : fully equipped, inquire within

• By Laura Bowers• Harcourt, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-15-205764-0• Interest Level: YA

• Raised by a great-grandmother and a bunch of beauty shop buddies, fourteen-year-old Abbey resolves to overcome her unhappy childhood and disillusionment with the mother who deserted her.

Real Life

• Shug • ByJenny Han.• Aladdin Mix, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-1-41690-943-9

Interest Level: 5-8

• Annemarie "Shug" Wilcox, facing junior high school, disgruntled with her appearance, and confused by changing relationships, decides there is nothing worse than being twelve-years-old.

Real Life

• Bounce • By Natasha Friend• Scholastic Press,2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-439-85350-7

• Thirteen-year-old Evyn's world is turned upside-down when her father, widowed since she was a toddler, suddenly decides to marry a woman with six children, move with Ev and her older brother from Maine to Boston, and enroll her in private school.

Real Life• Title: The Secret Language of Girls • By Frances O'Roark Dowell• Atheneum Books for Young Readers,

2004• ISBN-13: 978-0-689-84421-8

Interest Level: 3-6• Marylin and Kate have been friends since nursery

school, but when Marylin becomes a middle school cheerleader and Kate begins to develop other interests, their relationship is put to the test. The sequel to this book is: The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

Real Life

• Pieces of Georgia : a Novel • By Jen Bryant• Publisher: Yearling, 2007 • ISBN-13: 978-0-440-42055-2• Interest Level: 5-8

• In journal entries to her mother, a gifted artist who died suddenly, thirteen-year-old Georgia McCoy reveals how her life changes after she receives an anonymous gift membership to a nearby art museum.

Sad

• Kat Got Your Tongue • By Lee Weatherly• David Fickling Books, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-385-75117-9• Interest Level: YA

• After being hit by a car, thirteen-year-old Kat Tyler wakes up in the hospital with no memory of her previous life and must reconcile her new personality with her old when she reads the shocking secrets in her diary.

Sad

• The Mother-Daughter Book Club • By Heather Vogel Frederick• Simon & Schuster Books for Young

Readers, 2007• ISBN-13: 978-0-689-86412-4• Interest Level: 3-6

• The mothers of four very different sixth-grade girls pressure them into forming a book club, and find, as they read the classic novel "Little Women," that they have more in common than they thought.

Sad

• Homecoming

• By Cynthia Voigt

• Atheneum Books for Young Readers,1981

• ISBN-13: 978-0-689-30833-8

• Interest Level: 5-8

• Sequel: Dicey's song. Abandoned by their mother, four children begin a search for a home and an identity.

Sad

• My Louisiana Sky • By Kimberly Willis Holt• Publisher: Holt, 1998• ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-5251-0• Interest Level: 5-8

• Growing up in Saitter, Louisiana, in the 1950s, twelve-year-old Tiger Ann struggles with her feelings about her stern, but loving grandmother, her mentally slow parents, and her good friend and neighbor, Jesse.

Sad

• Pretty Like Us • By Carol Lynch Williams• Peachtree, 2008• ISBN-13: 978-1-56145-444-0

Interest Level: 5-8• Reading Level: 5.5

• A shy, small-town girl learns the true meaning of loyalty, love, and beauty through her friendship with a classmate who is suffering from a rare, life-threatening illness.

Sad

• Red Kayak • By Priscilla Cummings• Dutton Children's Books, 2004• ISBN-13: 978-0-525-47317-6• Interest Level: 5-8

• Living near the water on Maryland's Eastern Shore, thirteen-year-old Brady and his best friends J.T. and Digger become entangled in a tragedy which tests their friendship and their ideas about right and wrong.

Most Popular Series for Girls• Uglies• Clique • Twilight• Bloody Jack• Lily Dale• Books by Lurlene McDaniel• Meg Cabot Books• Bulford High • Books by Sarah Desson• Books by Deb Caletti• Books by Sonya Sones• Wedding Planner’s Daughter • Camp Confidential

Acknowledgements

• Follett’s Titlewave

• Clipart.com

• Destiny’s Online Catalog