Coming-of-Age Journeys

Initially advertised as an anonymous, true story of a teenage girl, Go Ask Alice (1971) by Beatrice Sparks is an epistolary novel, or a fictional work structured as a diary. The diary entries chronicle two years of a teen girl’s experience with social acceptance, family relationships, and drugs—primarily marijuana, LSD, and amphetamines. Although Beatrice Sparks initially claimed to be the diary’s editor, considerable evidence suggests that she’s the sole author of the fictional work. Nevertheless... Read Go Ask Alice Summary

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Gone with the Wind (1936) is the only novel by author Margaret Mitchell published during her lifetime. It is an enduring but controversial classic of American literature, and according to one poll, its popularity among American readers is only exceeded by the Bible. Thirty million copies have been sold worldwide.The novel’s tale of the Civil War is told from the perspective of the wealthy planter class that ruled the antebellum South, a class from which... Read Gone With The Wind Summary

Goodbye, Columbus is Philip Roth’s first work of literary fiction, consisting of six short stories, published on May 7, 1959. The book won the National Book Award in 1960 and is the first of many popular and successful works of fiction by Roth. Like his other novels and short stories, many of the stories occur in and around Roth’s birthplace of Newark, New Jersey, exploring the Jewish experience in the US. Roth is known for... Read Goodbye Columbus Summary

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Go Set a Watchman is the second novel of Pulitzer Prize winner Harper Lee. While this novel was initially touted as a sequel to her critically acclaimed 1960 debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, it is now regarded as an early draft of that book, featuring many of the same characters and, occasionally, the same scenes. When first published in 2015, the book set a record for the highest adult novel one-day sales at Barnes... Read Go Set A Watchman Summary

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Great Expectations is the 13th novel written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial in Dickens’s periodical, All the Year Round, Great Expectations, and Chapman and Hall published the novelized version in October of 1861. The novel is widely considered to be a classic example of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age genre, and it has been adapted into numerous plays, films, and television series. Other works by Dickens include Nicholas Nickleby, The Old... Read Great Expectations Summary

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Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books by Gary Paulsen is a 2001 nonfiction work covering the events that inspired the author to write Hatchet, a 1986 survival bildungsroman and Newbery Medal winner listed among the top 100 children’s books of all time by School Library Journal (“School Library Journal Top 100 Children’s Novels, 2012 Poll.” Library Thing). The award-winning novel follows Brian Robeson as he survives alone in the remote Canadian... Read Guts Summary

Gwendy’s Button Box is a horror fantasy novella written by the American authors Stephen King and Richard Chizmar. It is the first in a trilogy and was published in 2018. The novel follows Gwendy Peterson, a young and awkward middle school student, whose life changes when she becomes the guardian of a magical button box that has the potential for extreme good and extreme destruction. The novella explores themes such as Fate Versus Free Will... Read Gwendy's Button Box Summary

Half Brother (2010) is a young adult novel by Kenneth Oppel. In the novel, Oppel combines and fictionalizes several experiments in which chimpanzees learned sign language to communicate. The story follows the Tomlin family as they adopt a baby chimpanzee to see if it can learn and use language. Through this experiment and its effect on the characters, the text explores the themes of family, belonging, animal rights, communication, individuality, and growing up. The novel... Read Half Brother Summary

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Jacqueline Woodson's 2018 middle grade novel, Harbor Me, tracks the bonds of friendship that develop across six fifth-graders when they are given a unique opportunity to get to know each other. Amari, Esteban, Tiago, Ashton, Holly, and Haley Shondell McGrath (the narrator) are students with special learning needs in a Brooklyn school. Each friend has fears and frustrations that they share with each other over the year, and by opening up, they discover a collective... Read Harbor me Summary

Drawing on his childhood experiences, Gary Paulsen’s novel for young readers, Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered (1993, 1st edition), contains 12 vignettes chronicling the narrator’s visit to his distant relatives on a farm over one summer. In addition to the culture shock of adjusting to rural life, the book also centers on the narrator’s relationship with his reckless and adventurous country cousin, Harris, and the process of finding acceptance as part of a family... Read Harris and Me Summary