NOVELS IN VERSE BOOKMARK

811      After the Death of Anna Gonzales                                                                     Fields, Terri

FIE      Summary:  Poems written in the voices of forty-seven people, including students, teachers, and other school staff, record the aftermath of a high school student’s suicide and the preoccupations of teen life.

 FIC      Aleutian Sparrow                                                                                            Hesse, Karen

HES     Summary:  An Aleutian Islander recounts her suffering during World War II in American internment camps designed to “protect” the population from the invading Japanese. 

FIC      Almost Forever                                                                                                Testa, Maria

TES     Summary:  A young girl describes what she, her brother, and their mother do during the  year that her doctor father is serving in the Army in Vietnam.

 811.54  Becoming Joe DiMaggio                                                                                  Testa, Maria

TES      Summary:  Joseph Paul, an Italian boy, finds comfort from his tough life by listening to baseball games with his beloved grandfather.

FIC       Bronx Masquerade                                                                                          Grimes, Nikki

GRI      Summary:  While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high  school read aloud poems they’ve written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.

FIC      Call Me Maria                                                                                                  Cofer, Judith

COF    Summary:  A story in poetry and prose, in which 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.

FIC      Crank                                                                                                               Hopkins, Ellen

HOP    Summary:  Kristina Georgia Snow goes from being a gifted high school senior to the exact opposite after the handsome Adam introduces her to drugs.

 FIC      Dark Sons                                                                                                        Grimes, Nikki

GRI      Summary:  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.

FIC      A Cool Moonlight                                                                                             Johnson, Angela

JOH     Summary:  Eight-year-old Lila, born with xeroderma pigmentosum, a skin disease that  makes her sensitive to sunlight, makes secret plans to feel the sun’s rays on her ninth birthday.                   

 811      Carver: A Life in Poems                                                                                    Nelson, Marilyn

NEL     Summary:  The life of George Washington Carver, agricultural researcher noted for peanuts.

 FIC      Frenchtown Summer                                                                                         Cormier, Robert

COR   Summary:  Life in 1938 Frenchtown with Eugene, his family and friends, and the darker world of mystery and murder.

811      Girl Coming in for a Landing                                                                             Wayland, April H.

WAY   Summary:  A collection of over 100 poems recounting the ups and downs of one adolescent girl’s school year.

FIC      God Went to Beauty School                                                                             Rylant, Cynthia

RYL     Summary:  A novel in poems that reveal God’s discovery of the wonders and pain in the world he has created.

FIC      Heartbeat                                                                                                         Creech, Sharon

CRE     Summary:  Twelve-year-old Annie ponders the many rhythms of life the year that her                                                     mother becomes pregnant, her grandfather begins faltering, and her best friend (and running partner) becomes distant.

811      Jump Ball: A Basketball Season in Poems                                                         Glenn, Mel

GLE    Summary:  What will happen to Tower High’s basketball season when a high-school team

bus goes out of control on an icy road?  Find out through voices of players, teachers, parents, and bystanders.

811      Learning to Swim: A Memoir                                                                            Turner, Ann

TUR    Summary:  A series of poems convey the feeling of  a young girl whose sense of joy and

security at the family’s summer house is shattered when an older boy who lives nearby sexually abuses her.

811      Locomotion                                                                                          Woodson, Jacqueline

WOO  Summary:  Inspired by his teacher, eleven-year-old Lonnie begins to write about his life in a

            series of poems in which he discusses his feelings about his friends, his foster mom, his little

            sister Lili, and the death of his parents.

811      Loose Threads                                                                                                 Grover, Lorie Ann

GRO    Summary:  Seventh grader Kay Garber’s happy world turns to chaos when her

            grandmother reveals that she has breast cancer.  How will Kay cope with all the changes

            in her life?

FIC      Love That Dog                                                                                     Creech, Sharon

CRE    Summary:  Jack doesn’t like writing poetry…that’s just for girls, right?  He only does it

            because his teacher keeps giving him poetry assignments.  Witness hits transformation as

            the story unfolds.

FIC      Make Lemonade                                                                                              Wolff, Virginia E.

WOL   Summary:  LaVaughn needs a part-time job, and ends up working for Jolly, an unwed teen

            mother, babysitting her two kids and “making lemonade” out of difficult times.

FIC      On Pointe                                                                                                         Grover, Lorie Ann

GRO    Summary:  In this novel written in free verse, Clare and her grandfather must deal with changes in their lives when Clare’s summer growth spurt threatens to end her dream of becoming a ballet dancer and her grandfather suffers a stroke.

FIC      Out of the Dust                                                                                     Hesse, Karen

HES     Summary:  Fourteen-year-old Billie Jo writes in compelling, free-floating verse about the                                            
            grim realities of life during the dust storms, when crops and dreams alike blow away like                                     tumbleweeds.

FIC      Shakespeare Bats Cleanup                                                                               Koertge, Ron

KOE    Summary:  When a fourteen-year-old baseball player catches mononucleosis, he discovers

            that keeping a journal and experimenting with poetry not only helps fill the time, it also

            helps him deal with life, love, and loss.

811      Something About America                                                                             Testa, Maria

TES     Summary:  Presents a collection of poems that relate a fictional story, inspired by actual

            events, where a young girl struggles with the difficulty of growing up in America as an

            Immigrant from Kosova, Yugoslavia.

FIC      Spinning Through the Universe                                                              Frost, Helen

FRO    Summary:  A collection of poems written in the voices of Mrs. Williams of room 214, her students, and a custodian about their interactions with each other, their families, and the world around them.  Includes notes on the poetic forms represented.

FIC      Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Sister Went Crazy                        Sones, Sonya

SON    Summary:  A younger sister is left behind to cope with a grieving family and friends who

            turn their backs on her when her sister is hospitalized after a mental breakdown.

FIC      Things Left Unsaid                                                                                Hemphill, Stephanie

HEM    Summary:  After a lifetime of conforming to the image of what her parents and high school friends want her to be, Sarah must come to terms with her own identity when her destructive best friend tries to commit suicide.  Told in the form of free-verse poems.

FIC      The Trial                                                                                                           Bryant, Jennifer

BRY    Summary:  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.

FIC      True Believer                                                                                                    Wolff, Virginia E.

WOL   Summary:  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 – an

            occasion to rise to.

FIC      What My Mother Doesn’t Know                                                                      Sones, Sonya

SON    Summary:  Sophie describes her relationships with a series of boys as she searches for Mr.        Right.

811      Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?: A Mystery in Poems                                         Glenn, Mel

GLE     Summary:  A murder mystery told in free verse poems, describing the reactions of students,

            colleagues, and others when high school teacher Mr. Chippendale, loved by some, hated by

            others, is shot as the school day begins.

FIC      Witness                                                                                                            Hesse, Karen

HES     Summary:  A series of 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.

FIC      Worlds Afire                                                                                                    Janeczko, Paul B.

JAN     Summary:  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.

FIC      Trash                                                                                                                Darrow, Sharon

DAR    Summary:  Graffiti artists Sissie Lexie and younger brother Boy try to maintain a sense of family while living in a series of foster homes and staying with their older sister, until a tragic accident forces Sissy to make decisions about her future.

FIC      Yellow Star                                                                                                      Roy, Jennifer

ROY    From 1939, when Sylvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a            

            Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland’s Lodz ghetto during the Nazi

            occupation.

February 2007