April 1, 2017 | jonesw
National Poetry Month is celebrated across the world in the month of April. Not sure where to start with poetry? Try a novel in verse! Like a traditional novel, these books tell a complete story, but they use the verse style of poetry. Check out the call number 811.54 for traditional volumes of poetry.
Sent to an Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school after her ex-boyfriend shoots himself, seventeen-year-old Emily expresses herself through poetry as she relives their relationship, copes with her guilt, and begins to heal.
Addie struggles with depression when she becomes pregnant and makes the difficult choice to have an abortion.
The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.
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.
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.
Written in free verse, explores how three teenagers try to cope with the consequences of their mother's addiction to crystal meth and its effects on their lives.
Told from three viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Brendan, a wrestler, struggles to come to terms with his place on the transgender spectrum while Vanessa, the girl he loves, and Angel, a transgender acquaintance, try to help.
Fifteen-year-old Shay is trying to cope with being overweight and getting bullied in school, but when she falls in love with mysterious Blake, insecure Shay needs the help of her two best friends to make love prevail.
Her family runs Stevens Brothers Funeral Home, which is ironic since Faith Hope Stevens is not long for this world. Unless someone dies. Unless there is a match. Staying alive will mean a heart transplant. Faith copes with wit and nerve. She's also a little pissed off. She will never grow old. She will never have a boyfriend. Then one shocking day everything changes.
Forgotten Girl, a fifteen-year-old poet, is going through the most difficult time of her life--the breakup of her parents, and her mom's resulting depression--when she meets Random Boy, a hot guy who, like her, feels like an outcast and secretly writes poetry to deal with everything going on in his life. In The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl & Random Boy, the couple's poems come together to tell their unique love story. The two nameless teenagers come from opposite sides of the tracks, yet they find understanding in each other when they lay bare their life stories through the poetry they write and share with each other. Through verse, they document the power of first kisses, the joy of finally having someone on their side, the devastation of jealousy, and the heartbreaking sadness of what each of them is simultaneously dealing with at home and hiding from the world. Finally they have someone to tell and somewhere to tell it in their marble notebook. This is the powerful story of two imperfect teens in first love who find solace in poetry.
Ronit, an Israeli girl, and Jamil, a Palestinian boy, fall desperately into the throes of forbidden love, one that would create an irreparable rift between their families if it were discovered.
A novel in verse follows the experiences of Molly, who is forced to confront painful realities in her own life while struggling to help a spirited but mentally ill homeless girl during the holiday season.
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.
In this novel in verse, two very different girls bond while hospitalized for Crohn's disease.