10 Inspirational Books for Teens
When we think about high-interest books for students, we often jump straight to fiction: murder mysteries, fantasy, over-the-top drama, science fiction.
But a genre we often overlook, to our and our students’ detriment, is memoir. And not the stuffy old dead guy kind either. Memoirs about people students can relate to or should know about. Many of our students loved inspirational books for teens. They enjoyed reading about real people who struggled in recognizable ways and made it out the other side.
Remembering this, we decided to investigate inspirational books for teens, specifically memoirs, and we were blown away by the wide array of stories just waiting to be shared with our students. We learned so much and were inspired by these stories, but more importantly, we could see our students eagerly devouring these titles on independent reading days in class.
Even better, many current memoirs are shorter than the massive tomes published in the fantasy genre, and they often include pictures and some are even written in a graphic novel format, making them perfect options for the struggling and reluctant readers who fill the seats in our classrooms. Knowing that our students are not only reading but reading inspirational books for teens? What more could we want?
We hope you’ll consider checking out one or two of these memoirs to recommend in your classroom: we’re confident there’s at least one story on this list that will resonate with your students!
10 Inspirational Books for Teens: Memoir Edition
14-year-old Robin is a little bit awkward: her curly hair is cut like a boy’s, and she’s both taller and more flat-chested than the tiny classmates populating her middle school in Seoul, South Korea. When her single mom tells her they’re going on vacation to Huntsville, Alabama, in the United States, she’s a little confused: they’ve traveled all over the world together, and she’s not sure what’s so special about Alabama.
Robin soon finds out that they’re not just in Alabama for vacation: her mother has moved them there because she’s getting married. Naturally, Robin is quite upset: she didn’t get to say goodbye to her friends, she barely speaks English, and her new stepfather’s children from a previous marriage aren’t particularly welcoming.
Robin struggles to adjust to her new life in America, but when her mom signs her up for a comics drawing class, she discovers a new way to express herself and even makes a friend who shares her passion for comics, and these new discoveries support her as she transitions to her new life.
The comic book format is perfect, and Ha’s drawings are beautiful. We think her story will resonate with students who have struggled to adjust to life in America, but we also think it will appeal to teens who have dealt with blended families or even just the struggle to fit in.
While Christine (preferred pronoun: they) has visited family in Mexico before, this summer is the first time they’re going alone. Half-white and half-Mexican, Christine doesn’t quite fit in with either side of their family. And Christine’s insecurities about her body just lead to even more discomfort.
Once in Mexico, Christine is overjoyed to be with family, but Christine isn’t fluent in Spanish and feels isolated as a result. As the summer continues, however, Christine learns more about their family and heritage, and by the time Christine goes home, they have a new appreciation for who they are.
While we think this graphic memoir will appeal to many students who can relate to Chrstine’s struggle to fit into two different cultures, we also think the memoir perfectly captures the awkwardness of being a teenager: sure, the circumstances are unique to each person, but the feeling of discomfort in your own skin and desire to belong? That’s something we all can relate to.
Tyler Feder had just made it through her first year of college when her mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, and by spring break her sophomore year, Tyler’s mother had died.
Feder’s graphic memoir is a beautiful and funny way of processing her own grief, full of memories of her beloved mother, the pain she felt through her mom’s illness and death, and the confusing jumble of emotions she feels in the “new normal” of life without a mother.
Becky Albertalli describes the memoir as “a gift to anyone who’s ever grieved and a guidebook to those who haven’t,” which is perfect. The best part about it is, as Beth Evans says in another review, its “refreshing honesty.” Grief is messy, hard, and recursive, not the smooth progression through five stages that we like to pretend it is. Well-meaning family and friends say insensitive things that make us feel worse instead of better. The loss of a loved one never stops feeling wrong, no matter how long it’s been. And death is something we have to face eventually, despite our culture’s wild discomfort with it.
Many students will appreciate Feder’s story, and we imagine it will be an immense comfort to students who have lost a loved one themselves. Do be aware, however, that people grieve in their own ways, and this is a book about hard and sad things from the beginning. Feder’s matter-of-fact tone and grim humor are refreshing but will not be for everyone. Given how much we don’t know about our students’ lives, this is one that is well-worth recommending but that should be recommended with care and sensitivity.
Margarita lives in 1950s Los Angeles, but she loves visiting her mother’s family in Cuba, a lush and beautiful island where people dance and sing, surrounded by fruit trees, animals, and soft island breezes. When her family moves temporarily to northern California, near the Oregon border, the gloomy fog, rocky coast, and towering redwoods couldn’t be more different from the tropical beauty of Cuba, yet Margarita loves them, too, and this sums up her experience: caught between two cultures, in love with both but always missing the other.
It’s not long before the politics of the larger world create an insurmountable rift between Margarita and the island she loves: rebellion in Cuba and the subsequent Bay of Pigs invasion mean not only that Margarita can no longer return to the island but that this beloved place and her family are now spoken of as enemies. As her country is disparaged day after day in America, she longs for the beauty, freedom, and family who live there and feels torn between the two parts of her.
Engle’s memoir, written in verse, is gorgeous and sheds light on a period in history that many of us are vaguely aware of but rarely consider from varied perspectives. Many students will relate to Engle’s feeling of being trapped between cultures, and for those of us who can’t relate to that, it’s a thought-provoking opportunity to view history from a new perspective, developing empathy for an experience that’s often missing from the pages of our history books.
We’ve recommended Noah’s memoir, particularly its adaptation for young readers, on multiple occasions: our students loved reading about Noah’s hilarious stories about a very naughty kid (his adjective, not ours!) growing up in South Africa and his deep love for his long-suffering single mother, which emanates from every page.
Steph read this again recently and was struck by just how wise and powerful Noah’s reflections on race and language are. Interwoven into the humorous childhood stories are details about life in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s under apartheid. Noah was literally born a crime—the child of a white father and a Black mother, his very existence as a “mixed” child was illegal—and his reflections on the dynamics of the country he grew up in are profound and relevant to life in America, where, though we may not be living under apartheid, we certainly have our own serious struggles with race and empathy.
Running through much of the memoir is Noah’s chameleon-like ability to bounce between racial groups and the feeling of dissonance he often experiences: his lighter skin affords him the privileges of being a “colored” person in South Africa, but he relates more to the Black community: to him, those are his people. And he reflects frequently on the role language plays in his ability to navigate life: it’s less often his color that gets him out of trouble than it is his ability to speak English, in addition to multiple African languages.
Noah’s words ring true and remind us of the role perception, whether it’s physical, socioeconomic, or linguistic, plays in how we interact with and respond to those around us (reminding us of Robin Ha’s and Christine Suggs’s experiences described above). Students are drawn in by the humorous stories, but beyond the laughter, there’s a lot to think about and discuss after reading (or listening to) Noah’s memoir.

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Marcus Samuellson’s memoir opens in Ethiopia: he was born in a small village, and he, his mother, and his sister Linda are sick with tuberculosis, coughing up blood. Marcus’s mother straps him to her back and she and Linda walk 75 miles to a hospital in Addis Ababa, where she dies, and Marcus and Linda survive. Marcus and Linda are adopted by a Swedish couple, Ann Marie and Lennart Samuelsson, and grow up loved and cared for in Goteborg, Sweden.
Marcus’s Swedish grandmother teaches him to cook, but he is determined to become a soccer star. When injury ruins those plans, however, Marcus begins his journey to becoming a professional chef, starting at the Culinary Institute in Goteborg before working in a series of kitchens around Europe and eventually coming to New York City, where has become a renowned chef: the youngest chef to win a three-star restaurant review from The New York Times, the guest chef for President Obama’s first state dinner, and the creator of Red Rooster Harlem in New York City.
Samuelsson’s journey to becoming a chef is fascinating and underscores the power of persistence and hard work, but it also, as Samuellson writes in his introduction, emphasizes the mess along the way. Students will likely be inspired by Samuellson’s journey, and burgeoning chefs will enjoy going behind the scenes of the restaurant world.
One thing we did want to mention is that Samuelsson’s description of fathering a child with a one-night-stand may be off-putting to some students who don’t have an active father in their lives. His cavalier attitude about it could come across as hurtful to students who have experienced this kind of relationship from the other side.
We absolutely loved Martín’s graphic memoir about a family RV trip to Mexico to bring his abuelito home to live with them.
The seventh of nine children, Pedro has grown up hearing stories of his superhero grandfather, who fought in the Mexican Revolution. Naturally, there is always something going on in his large, chaotic family, and the story of their road trip to Mexico is full of adventure and hilarity, from the fights over road trip music to the disastrous stop at the Mexican border to a run-in with a deer on the drive home.
As with any good road trip story, Pedro grows in important ways, connecting with his family and his culture, especially when he discovers his grito.
Martín’s memoir is full of laugh-out-loud moments, and it’s a delight to read about a family who, despite all the chaos, truly loves each other. We taught many students of Mexican descent who, like Pedro, came from large families and frequently visited Mexico on school vacations, and we’re confident this would have been hard to keep on the shelves of our classroom libraries.
Many of our students are drawn to history and love reading about and empathizing with characters or people who have lived through the events in the pages of their history textbooks. Sachiko Yasui’s experience of the horrific atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, is fascinating and heartbreaking, and students learning about World War II in their history classes will definitely find it interesting.
Sachiko was six years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and she shares her story of the bombing itself and the devastating consequences for her family and country. The book is full of pictures and sidebars explaining the surrounding history, which make it a perfect recommendation for students at a wide range of reading levels: fascinating for anyone, the short length and pictures make it accessible for struggling and reluctant readers.
Sachiko has made it her life’s work to share her experiences in an effort to build a more peaceful future. As she says in the introductory quotation, “What happened to me must never happen to you.”
We loved Michaela’s fascinating life story. Born Mabinty Bangura in Sierra Leone, she was always different. Her parents married for love (unusual in their culture), and her father taught her to read, despite her uncle’s insistence that all a “girl child” needs to know is “how to cook, clean, sew, and care for children.” According to her uncle, her vitiligo makes her unmarriageable, and when her father is killed in the country’s civil war and her mother dies of starvation, Mabinty’s uncle delivers her to an orphanage, where the 27 children are ranked and referred to based on their desirability. Mabinty is known as Number 27.
While in the orphanage, Mabinty finds a magazine cover featuring a ballerina, and she holds onto it, entranced by the ballerina’s beauty. When Mabinty is adopted by Elaine and Charles DePrince, she goes to live with them in New Jersey, and it’s not long before, inspired by the magazine cover she adores, Mabinty (now Michaela) begins taking ballet lessons.
The memoir details Michaela’s years of hard work and discipline to become the ballerina she long admired on the cover of the magazine. She eventually trains with the American Ballet Theatre, and after starring in the documentary First Position, she has performed with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Dutch National Ballet, the Boston Ballet, and Beyoncé, in her visual album Lemonade.
Michaela’s story is full of hope and a clear illustration of the power of hard work and discipline. We think many students will be inspired by it, and we especially recommend it to students interested in dance, as it provides an inside look at the world of professional ballet.
“By the time I was fifteen years old, I had been in jail nine times.”
So begins the story of Lynda Blackmon Lowery, who, at 15, was the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Her memoir describes life in Alabama during segregation, the events of Bloody Sunday, and the experience of being put in jail for engaging in nonviolent protests. She also takes us on the road with her from Selma to Montgomery.
The beautifully illustrated memoir gives students an inside perspective on the Civil Rights Movement, and the easy-to-read format makes it a great recommendation for struggling and reluctant readers. We learned a lot, and we believe students will, too.
In a world where we’re inundated with bad news and ugly headlines, our students need reason to hope. Inspirational books for teens are more important than ever, and there are many memoirs written for teens about a wide variety of life experiences that will empower them and offer hope, compassion, and a sense of belonging amidst challenges. Are there inspirational books for teens that your students have loved? Please share with us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works.
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Looking for YA books to suggest to your students or use for your own FCF activity? Check out the YA book section of our website for all our recommendations.