9 Realistic Fiction Books for Teens

If you’ve ever visited Alcatraz Island, off the coast of San Francisco, you have a sense of how miserable it would be to live there. Set aside the part where you’re sharing a small piece of land with convicted criminals. It is COLD and WINDY.

When Moose’s father gets a job as a prison guard, the family moves to Alcatraz, joining the small community of families who live and work on the island. Moose is not thrilled, but he makes friends with the other children who live on the island, and readers get a fascinating inside look into this piece of history.

The story gains its depth, however, from Moose’s family’s efforts to cope with his sister Natalie’s autism, in a time where understanding of the condition and appropriate treatment are scarce. Moose’s mother is desperate to get Natalie into a special school where she can receive help, but in the meantime, Moose is saddled with caring for his sister while his mother works.

Many of our students, like Moose, put their own lives on hold to care for younger siblings while their parents work, and the novel captures the tension many of them feel between loving their younger sibling and feeling frustrated by a responsibility they didn’t ask for. These students often grow up faster than their peers, and we see the same thing in Moose, who often knows how to communicate with Natalie more effectively than his parents do. It’s a fun and engaging story, with realistic family dynamics that will draw your students in.

While not written specifically for young adults, we’re including it because it was recommended to us by a few freshman book lovers and we all loved it. Wingate’s 2017 novel will fascinate students who love realistic fiction. It’s inspired by the real-life story of Georgia Tann, who, for two decades, kidnapped children and adopted them out to desperate families, making herself a millionaire in the process. The children suffered greatly while under her care at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

Wingate’s novel alternates between the 1939 story of 12-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings and the present-day story of Avery Stafford, a young lawyer in the South grappling with her career, her impending wedding, and a family health crisis. Rill and her siblings are taken from their home while their mother is in the hospital, and her chapters tell the story of the children’s traumatic experiences. When Avery attends an event at a nursing home as part of a political meet-and-greet, a resident from the nursing home approaches her, calling her Fern. This encounter begins a dive into history that eventually brings the two storylines together.

The novel is incredibly sad, and there are parts about the children’s experience in the orphanage that are hard to read, but the story is compelling and the real-life events it’s based on are fascinating. Students will find a lot to appreciate in Wingate’s novel and will find it easy to empathize with Rill and her siblings.

We think Dear Martin is an important read for students, addressing the many ways systemic racism manifests in American society through the experience of Justyce, a young Black man who begins writing to Martin Luther King, Jr. as a way to process the racism, big and small, he encounters on a daily basis. Much of the earlier parts of the novel center around the casual racism he encounters in students at his private school, but when he becomes involved in a shooting by an off-duty white police officer, he has much bigger issues to grapple with.

The novel is highly engaging for students of all ages and opens the door for discussion of a wide variety of important issues that frequently appear in the pages of today’s newspapers.

Dear Justyce is a sequel to Dear Martin from the perspective of Quan, a minor character in the original novel, who is serving a prison sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. Justyce and Quan both grew up in the same Atlanta neighborhood, but Quan stayed while Justyce went to private school, giving him a much different experience.

This different perspective allows Stone to explore systemic racism in the justice system in more depth than she did in Dear Martin. How did Quan come to be not only accused of, but sentenced, for a murder he didn’t commit, and why is it so challenging for him to prove his innocence and get the justice he deserves?

Many of our students were fans of the growing relationship between Eleanor and Park. Both feel awkward and out of place in their world. Eleanor is new to the school, red-headed, overweight, and poor, wearing patched clothes to school every day, experiencing bullying, and dealing with tough issues at home. Park, who is half-white and half-Korean, does his best to fly under the radar at school, is interested in comic books (unlike his sports-oriented family), and clashes with his white father about what it means to be a man.

Eleanor and Park end up sitting next to each other on the bus every day, and through a shared appreciation for comic books, develop a relationship that makes their bus rides the best part of their days. Much as he enjoys spending time with Eleanor, Park must navigate the attention he draws by engaging with the target of school bullying as well as his own family’s unwillingness to accept Eleanor.

As Eleanor’s home life becomes increasingly dangerous, there is a sense of reality in how the novel’s events play out that is often lacking in young adult novels. Sure, we like to end on a “happily ever after,” but sometimes there’s satisfaction in seeing the all-too-true reality that things don’t always work out the way we want them to.

Frank Li (Korean name Sung-Min Li) has a lot of parental expectations to live up to: ace his SATs, earn top grades, study medicine at Harvard, and, of course, date a Korean girl. Too bad Frank would rather attend the Berklee College of Music and just started dating his first girlfriend, Brit, who happens to be white.

Thankfully, Joy Song, the Korean daughter of his parents’ friends, has romantic issues of her own. So, the two come up with a fake-dating scheme to keep their parents happy while following their own paths. Of course, as is often the case, things don’t go according to plan.

Yoon’s novel tackles important themes of race, the pull between two cultures, the immigrant experience, living up to parental expectations while trying to discover who you really are, and, through some family events that unfold, a health scare. It’s a book about real people working through regular problems, and we think many students (of all backgrounds and cultures) will find something to relate to here.

This utterly charming epistolary novel (not written for young adults but one your history lovers will enjoy) tells one of the lesser-known stories of World War II: the German occupation of the Channel Islands, off the coast of England. The islanders were essentially cut off from the rest of the world, prisoner slaves were brought in from around Europe, and the Germans took the islanders’ food, leaving many of them near starvation.

Our entry into the story comes in 1946, just after the war, when Miss Juliet Ashton is on tour promoting her first book and afraid she will not be able to come up with an idea for a second book. She receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a resident of Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands), who discovered Ashton’s name written in the front of a book and hopes she can help him find more work by the same author.

Through their correspondence, Juliet learns about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which the islanders started during the war to talk their way out of trouble with a German officer. While starting as a lie, their book club ended up being a lifeline throughout the war. We hear the story of the war through all their voices, and we, along with them, wait for news about Elizabeth McKenna, sent to a concentration camp during the war for helping one of the prisoner slaves.

The history is fascinating, but even more important, the islanders are quirky and likable, and it’s a delight to get to know them through their letters. And their impact on Miss Ashton is life-changing.

It’s troubling that a novel about a school shooting doesn’t read like an unimaginable thriller but an inside look at the events that frequently fill our newsfeeds. The novel takes place over the span of 54 minutes as the student body of Opportunity High School finds itself locked in the auditorium after a school assembly, moments before Tyler Browne begins shooting.

The novel is told from the perspective of four narrators, some of whom are trapped in the auditorium, some of whom are outside, all of whom have some connection to the shooter. The characters’ backstory gives us insights into Tyler and the motivations that led him to carry out his horrendous act, and the fast-paced events keep us on the edge of our seats, waiting to find out what happens.

We actually learned about this book from students, and while it’s a chilling topic, school shootings have become such a part of their educational lives that the subject is all too relatable to them.

Emoni Santiago is a teen mom, trying to navigate motherhood, her senior year of high school, college applications, and a lot of family baggage. She also loves to cook, and she has a special gift for it: she just knows which herbs and spices will taste great together.

Initially, Emoni plans to enroll in study hall and get through her last semester: she has enough on her plate. But when her school offers its first cooking class, highlighting the flavors of Spain, she’s not able to resist adding it to her schedule. She’s especially excited about the planned spring trip to Spain, though she’s not sure how she’ll pay for it or find someone to watch her daughter. The new boy at school, Malachi, insists on being friends, which complicates her life even more.

We appreciated that this is a book about a teenager navigating the challenges of daily life, challenges many of our students face. No magic, no vampires or werewolves, no world to save, no fight to the death. Just a strong and admirable young woman trying to do the best she can amidst challenging, yet relatable, circumstances.