100 books like Lullabies for Little Criminals

This is quite possibly my favourite memoir ever written. It made me laugh, cry and scream. Never have I seen such a clearly dysfunctional family that didn’t even realize they were dysfunctional.

I loved them because they embraced life no matter what and hated them because they didn’t see how bad what they were doing to one another was. Full of elements and emotions from my own childhood, this book made me feel deeply and emotionally.  

Frank McCourt's classic book, the memoir of his childhood, is proof in the pudding that the origin of humor is the suffering of the low-status character. And that’s only one reason why I love it.

He had me at “Above all -- we were wet.” His descriptions of the impossible and undignified conditions of his childhood, where children had absolutely no control over anything and adults were at the mercy of life itself, brought me so close to him that I think I started believing we were actually related and scribbled him into the family tree as a long-lost uncle.

McCourt captures the hapless quality of gullible, unsupervised children let loose on an unforgiving world with a buoyancy that comes through every sentence and rises above the brutal conditions of his childhood. 

And the truth he finds in the details, from the brutality of religious authority figures to the abject… show more.

Markus Zusak’s book is definitely not for the faint of heart or those easily bored: its narrator is Death, and the book is over 500 pages long. Not really the kind of book you’d think of for those aged 12 and up (as it’s listed). But it is one that really ought to be universally read.

The book follows two young children battling for survival in Nazi Germany. Entropy hangs in the air like Death’s shadow. Life’s harsh realities—like evil, heartache, pain, and mortality—are ever-present. In Max's (the young boy) dreams, he is boxing with Hitler and lands a punch, knocking the Fuhrer down, but soon he’s overtaken by the crowd.

This is one of the reasons I appreciate this book: winners sometimes lose; bad things happen to good people. And yet, the response to this existential injustice isn’t to become a mere survivor, victim, or martyr. It’s to… show more.

I love historical fiction, especially when authors throw in a touch of crime. So, that’s what first drew me to this book.

What kept me reading and what made me rank this novel so highly is the gradual unlayering of the main character as the story progresses. Sure, Kya is a victim and a survivor, but she is so much more, and she is capable of more than I could have anticipated. As in some of my other favorite novels, it’s that loyalty to human nature, the understanding that circumstances can make good choices wrong and poor choices right, that pulled me in.

If I had known the ending when I started the book, I might not have believed it possible, but Delia Owens made it work.

I loved this book because it gives a dark vision of what could go wrong if we fail to control pandemics. I read this book in 2019–just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave it a terrifying reality!

I am a lab scientist, and my work can focus on somewhat abstract ideas about infection, but this book inspired me to think about the (huge) human impact.

Shuggie Bain invades the senses: You smell the sour breath of Shuggie’s mum as she snores, open-mouthed, in a drunken stupor; you feel the stiffness of the rug where endless spilled drinks were left to dry. Just as important, you feel the push-and-pull of love and despair, hope and anger, as Shuggie grows up, the youngest child of an alcoholic who is ultimately abandoned by the rest of their family. The final chapters, as Shuggie moves into adolescence and struggles to break from the burden of becoming caretaker to the woman who should have been taking care of him, are exceptional.

I taught primary school children for many years, including children with a variety of learning difficulties.

It just so happened that at the time I was reading The Curious Incident I was also teaching a young boy with autistic spectrum disorder. The main character in the novel, Christopher Boone, shared so many character traits with the boy in my class that I pictured him the whole way through.

It’s not easy to write about neurodivergent people, you have to get it right as the last thing you want to do is patronize or stereotype. In my opinion, the author did an incredible job. I laughed and I cried, and I’m sure you will do the same.

Janet Fitch achieved a miracle with this novel about a girl rambling through a flawed foster care system after her mother is convicted of a heinous crime.

In a predictable set-up, the mother would be supportive despite her incarceration. She would be a wise person offering the girl advice. But the author had the confidence and skill to make the mother a beautiful monster, a brilliant, malignant poet whose attempts at controlling the girl are frustrated by the physical distance between them.

The girl’s growing awareness of her mother’s destructive potential is set against a series of foster families. I highly recommend White Oleander for the honesty of the mother-daughter conflict. The novel expertly depicts the epic struggle to create an identity in relation to a charismatic, narcissistic parent.

This story, set in Nigeria, is a commentary on social economics and gender without sounding like one.

Fourteen-year-old Adunni wants an education to actualize her voice and make a difference but is seen as a commodity by her father and sold to be an old man's third wife. When tragedy hits her new household, she is backhandedly sold as a domestic servant.

I immediately fell in love with Adunni, savoring her simple but insightful descriptions. I identified with the grief she felt for her mother. Though heartbreaking at times, her determination was inspirational and encouraging as I continue on my own grief journey. She never loses hope and fights for what she wants for herself.

I felt the urge to applaud when I finished reading this book. 

In this book Laurie Halse Anderson lets us inside the mind of Melinda, a high schooler who finds herself increasingly isolated from friends and family.

As a reader, it was easy to share her frustration with how others treat her, because it was clear that her inner world didn’t match up with what others perceived outside of her. She has experienced a traumatic event, a violation that she doesn’t know how to process or talk about.

This novel masterfully captures the way Melinda compartmentalizes what has happened to her and grasps for coping mechanisms. Some of my favorite scenes occur in art class, where art-making becomes a key part of Melinda’s journey of gaining the courage to speak up about her trauma, and of reconnecting with others.