Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve taught English for 20 years and the novels I’ve enjoyed teaching most – because the students have enjoyed them most – are those with the first-person perspectives of young narrators. These characters’ voices ring loud and clear as they learn, change, and grow, often suffering and having to find resilience and strength to survive. The limited perspective also takes us into the mind and heart of the protagonist, so that we feel all the feels with them. This is why I chose a first-person perspective for the narrator of my own book ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’: Jackie Chadwick is sarcastic, funny, and observant. Readers love her.    


I wrote

Book cover of Cuckoo in the Nest

What is my book about?

It's the heatwave summer of 1976 and 14-year-old would-be poet Jackie Chadwick is newly fostered by the Walls. She desperately…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Catcher in the Rye

Fran Hill Why did I love this book?

Holden Caulfield’s sardonic, world-weary teenage voice grabbed me when I first read this book in preparation for teaching it to a class of boys.

He makes out he doesn’t really want to tell his story. Take it or leave it. He doesn’t care. Reverse psychology! I wanted to read on and find out what had gone wrong in his world to cause his cynicism.

My teenage students, during our lessons, raged at Holden, hated him, laughed at him, envied him, loved him, and felt for him as we tracked his progress in Manhattan where he pretends to be adult and fails. And they did well in their exam, I’m happy to report.  

By J.D. Salinger,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked The Catcher in the Rye as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

After leaving prep school Holden Caulfield spends three days on his own in New York City.


Book cover of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Fran Hill Why did I love this book?

Paddy Clarke’s 10-year-old voice is compelling and funny.

He lives in Dublin, Ireland in the 1960s, and the way he tells his story is breathless, fast-paced, and naïve: a child’s mind, puzzled at life’s complexities. I wanted to have him round for tea and reassure him.

His narration is full of left turns and right turns and about turns as we follow – or try to follow - his train of thought. He doesn’t understand many of the things that happen at school, at home, and with the friends with whom he roams town, playing war games and making nuisances of themselves.

But, as his family begins to fracture, we weep for him.  

By Roddy Doyle,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1993

Paddy Clarke is ten years old. Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke's name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown. Paddy Clarke's heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke hates his brother Francis because that's the rule. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don't love each other, and Paddy wants to understand, but can't.

See also: Cal by Bernard MacLaverty


Ad

Book cover of The Alchemy Fire Murder: a Mary Wandwalker Mystery

The Alchemy Fire Murder By Susan Rowland,

A traditional mystery with a touch of cozy, The Alchemy Fire Murder is for those who like feisty women sleuths, Oxford Colleges, alchemy, strong characters, and real concerns like trafficking, wildfires, racism, and climate change. This book especially works for those fascinated by myth and witches in history. Read for…

Book cover of Purple Hibiscus

Fran Hill Why did I love this book?

You know when you first go to someone else’s house and realise that not every family lives the way yours does?

It’s part of the coming-of-age process and can be both illuminating and destabilising. In Adichie’s story, set in post-colonial Nigeria, 15-year-old Kambili gets the chance to escape her wealthy but religiously-oppressive household and stay with her vibrant, liberal aunt.

I love the way Kambili’s narrative expresses the new freedom she feels there: she has a voice at last and the liberty to experience a sexual awakening. She needs these new strengths as her own family disintegrates into tragedy.  

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Purple Hibiscus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

“One of the most vital and original novelists of her generation.” —Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker

From the bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that…


Book cover of Black Swan Green

Fran Hill Why did I love this book?

I read this book years ago but it’s always stayed with me.

The teenage protagonist, 13-year-old Jason from Worcestershire, England, has a stammer: a speech difficulty that haunts him and has him performing all kinds of manoeuvers to avoid saying certain sounds in class. This would only add embarrassment onto all the other embarrassments he feels as a boy going through puberty.

He calls his stammer ‘Hangman’. As well as this daily struggle, he realises his parents are arguing, and he gets bullied at school.

As a reader, I was touched by his resilience and doggedness. David Mitchell has admitted that the book is semi-autobiographical and this adds another layer of poignancy. 

By David Mitchell,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Black Swan Green as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

David Mitchell comes home - to England in 1982, and is in the cusp of adolescence. Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village (Black Swan Green) in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth and he stammers. 13 chapters, each as self-contained as a short story, follow 13 months in his life as he negotiates the pitfalls of school and home and contends with bullies, girls and family politics. In the distance, the Falklands conflict breaks out; close at hand, the village mobilises against…


Ad

Book cover of Lap Baby

Lap Baby By Amy Q. Barker,

A story you'll never forget about survival, forgiveness, healing, and love.

Twenty years ago. A plane crash. Three women survivors are inexorably connected by fate, destiny, and a cause. 

Julie Geiger, a flight attendant, told five sets of parents to place their babies on the floor of the plane when…

Book cover of To Kill a Mockingbird

Fran Hill Why did I love this book?

This is another book I have taught to English classes and they’ve all fallen in love with its narrator, motherless Scout, cheering her on as she rages against being made into a more suitable ‘girl’ and urged to behave with more propriety.

At the beginning of the story, she is six. She lives in Maycomb, Alabama, in the early 1930s, and has yet to discover the injustice of the society within which she plays in the street, annoys her brother, and goes to school.

Harper Lee shows us very clearly, in the difference between Scout’s retrospective narrative and the child’s often hilarious dialogue, the innocence of a girl yet to discover the inhumanity and racism endemic in her town.  

By Harper Lee,

Why should I read it?

42 authors picked To Kill a Mockingbird as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Cuckoo in the Nest

What is my book about?

It's the heatwave summer of 1976 and 14-year-old would-be poet Jackie Chadwick is newly fostered by the Walls. She desperately needs stability, but their insecure, jealous teenage daughter isn't happy about the cuckoo in the nest and sets about ousting her.

When her attempts to do so lead to near-tragedy – and the Walls’ veneer of middle-class respectability begins to crumble – everyone in the household is forced to reassess what really matters. Funny and poignant, Cuckoo in the Nest is inspired by Fran Hill’s own experience of being fostered as a teenager.

Book cover of The Catcher in the Rye
Book cover of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Book cover of Purple Hibiscus

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,592

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 You might also like…

Book cover of God on a Budget: and other stories in dialogue

God on a Budget By J.M. Unrue,

Nine Stories Told Completely in Dialogue is a unique collection of narratives, each unfolding entirely through conversations between its characters. The book opens with "God on a Budget," a tale of a man's surreal nighttime visitation that offers a blend of the mundane and the mystical. In "Doctor in the…

Book cover of The Pianist's Only Daughter: A Memoir

The Pianist's Only Daughter By Kathryn Betts Adams,

The Pianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.

Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in coming of age, bildungsroman, and Nigeria?

Coming Of Age 1,390 books
Bildungsroman 329 books
Nigeria 68 books