Novels Written in Verse

Bibliography created by the Schaumburg Township District Library

FICTION BROWN, S.	*Hugging the Rock* by Susan Taylor Brown. Through a series of poems, Rachel expresses her feelings about her parents’ divorce, living without her mother, and her changing attitude towards her father.
FICTION JR-HI BRYANT, J.	*The Trial* by Jen Bryant. Living in Flemington, New Jersey, in 1935, twelve-year-old Katie Leigh Flynn describes, in a series of poems, the effect on her small town of the ongoing trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son.
FICTION CARVELL, M.	*Sweetgrass Basket* by Marlene Carvell. In alternating passages, two Mohawk sisters describe their lives at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established in 1879 to educate Native Americans, as they try to assimilate into white culture.
FICTION CHENG, A.	*Shanghai Messenger* by Andrea Cheng. A free-verse novel about eleven-year-old Xiao Mei’s visit with her extended family in China, where the Chinese-American girl finds many differences but also the similarities that bind a family together.
FICTION JR-HI FROST, H.,	*Keesha's House* by Helen Frost. 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.
FICTION FROST, H.	*Spinning Through the Universe: a Novel in Poems from Room 214* by Helen Frost. In a series of poems, a fifth-grade class and their teacher talk about their lives at school and at home.
FICTION JR-HI FULLERTON, A.	*Walking on Glass* by Alma Fullerton. A teenage boy recounts, in a free verse journal, his attempts to come to terms with the realities of his mother’s near-death coma.
FICTION JR-HI GLENN, M.	*Jump Ball: a Basketball Season in Poems* by Mel Glenn. Tells the story of a high school basketball team's season through a series of poems reflecting the feelings of students, their families, teachers, and coaches.
FICTION GRIMES, N.	*Danitra Brown Leaves Town* by Nikki Grimes. Recounts, in a series of poems and letters, Danitra's summer at her aunt's house in the country and her best friend Zuri's summer at home in town.
FICTION JR-HI GRIMES, N.	*Dark Sons* by Nikki Grimes. Alternating poems compare and contrast the conflicted feelings of Ishmael, son of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and Sam, a teenager in New York City, as they try to come to terms with being abandoned by their fathers and with the love they feel for their younger stepbrothers.
FICTION GRIMES, N.	*What Is Goodbye?: Poems on Grief* by Nikki Grimes. Alternating poems by a brother and sister convey their feelings about the death of their older brother and the impact it had on their family.
FICTION GROVER, L.	*Loose Threads* by Lorie Ann Grover. A series of poems describes how seventh-grader Kay Garber faces her grandmother's battle with breast cancer while living with her mother and great-grandmother and dealing with everyday junior high school concerns.
FICTION JR-HI HERRICKS, S.	*By the River* by Steven Herrick. A fourteen-year-old describes, through prose poems, his life in a small Australian town in 1962, where, since their mother’s death, he and his brother have been mainly on their own to learn about life, death, and love.
FICTION JR-HI HESSE, K.	*Witness* by Karen Hesse. Poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.
FICTION JANECZKO, P.	*Worlds Afire* by Paul B. Janeczko. In this novel written as a collection of eyewitness poems, the excitement and anticipation of attending the circus on July 6, 1944 in Hartford, Connecticut, turns to horror when a fire engulfs the circus tent, killing nearly 180 people, mostly women and children.
FICTION JOHNSON, L.	*Soul Moon Soup* by Lindsay Lee Johnson. After her father leaves and Phoebe and her mother struggle to survive in the city, Phoebe finally goes to the country to live with her grandmother where she learns family secrets and hopes her mother will return for her.
FICTION KLISE, K.	*Regarding the Trees: a Splintered Saga Rooted in Secrets* by Kate Klise. In this story told primarily through letters, Principal Russ wants the middle school trees to be trimmed before his administrative evaluation, but the project is interrupted by a town gender war, dueling chefs, student tree protests, and a surprise wedding.
FICTION JR-HI MAJOR, K.	*Ann and Seamus* by Kevin Major. A series of short poems tell the historically-based tale of a seventeen-year-old fisherman’s daughter’s heroic role in a maritime rescue and her relationship with a teenage boy whose quest for a better life finds him a passenger on the ill-fated ship.
FICTION JR-HI MYERS, W.	*Street Love* by Walter Dean Myers. This story told in free verse is set against a background of street gangs and poverty in Harlem in which seventeen-year-old African American Damien takes a bold step to ensure that he and his new love will not be separated.
FICTION ORTIZ COFER, J.	*Call Me Maria* by Judith Ortiz Cofer. Fifteen-year-old Maria leaves her mother and their Puerto Rican home to live in the barrio of New York with her father, feeling torn between the two cultures in which she has been raised.
FICTION JR-HI RYLANT, C.	*God Went to Beauty School* by Cynthia Rylant. A novel in poems that reveal God’s discovery of the wonders and pains in the world He has created.
FICTION SMITH, H.	*The Way a Door Closes* by Hope Anita Smith. A series of compelling poems tell the story of a thirteen-year-old boy and his family as they try to cope with the departure of their father.
FICTION JR-HI WAYLAND, A.	*Girl Coming in for a Landing: a Novel in Poems* by April Halprin Wayland. A collection of over 100 poems recounting the ups and downs of one adolescent girl's school year.
FICTION JR-HI WOLFF, V.	*True Believer* by Virginia Euwer Wolff. 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.
FICTION WOODSON, J.	*Locomotion* by Jacqueline Woodson. In a series of poems, after the death of his parents, eleven-year-old Lonnie writes about his life, being separated from his younger sister, living in a foster home, and finding his poetic voice at school.
FICTION JR-HI YEOMANS, E.	*Rubber Houses* by Ellen Yeomans. A novel in verse that relates seventeen-year-old Kit’s experiences as her younger brother is diagnosed with and dies of cancer and as she withdraws into and gradually emerges from her grief.
FICTION YU, C.	*Little Green: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolution* by Chun Yu. Chun Yu was born in China in 1966, the year the Great Cultural revolution began, and in spare poetry she remembers the first 10 years of her life. True to a child’s bewildered viewpoint, Yu gets across the grief at home and the school indoctrination.
FICTION ZIMMER, T.	*Reaching for Sun* by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. Josie, who lives with her mother and grandmother and has cerebral palsy, befriends a boy who moves into one of the rich houses behind her old farmhouse.