Here are 90 books that Pilu of the Woods fans have personally recommended if you like
Pilu of the Woods.
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My family was from Morocco and settled in France when I was five. Moreover, we were Jewish in a very Catholic world. Even with my friends, I often felt like I didn’t fit in. I now live in the US and still feel very drawn to stories of people who have felt at odds with their surroundings, who have had a difficult upbringing, who tried so hard to fit in. I find comfort in the book-company of others who also have struggled and yet found their own ways to deal with their difficulties. I have chosen books where the characters felt like friends to me.
Sunny is spending the summer with her grandfather in his retirement community after the family’s plan of a beach vacation is cancelled. I loved the connection between Sunny and her grandfather. Neither one was counting on this long visit and they both make the best of it. At first, it seems there is nothing much for Sunny to do. Luckily she meets the only other kid in the community and they become good friends, bonding over his beloved comics collection.
But there are things Sunny sees and doesn’t tell, secrets that weigh on her, troubling memories of home. From funny moments to poignant ones, I couldn’t put this book down.
Sunny Lewin has been packed off to Florida to live with her grandfather for the summer. At first she thought Florida might be fun -- it is the home of Disney World, after all. But the place where Gramps lives is no amusement park. It's full of . . . old people. Really old people. Luckily, Sunny isn't the only kid around. She meets Buzz, a boy who is completely obsessed with comic books, and soon they're having adventures of their own: facing off against golfball-eating alligators, runaway cats, and mysteriously disappearing neighbors. But the question remains -- why is…
I’ve always enjoyed reading true stories and stories that feel like they could be true. I enjoy learning about other people’s lives and experiences. If a character’s life experiences have been very different than my own, it is eye-opening and informative. If we’ve had similar experiences it helps me feel less alone. When writing, I usually draw inspiration from my own life experiences. With AWOL, I wanted to share military family culture and help readers affected by PTSD feel less alone.
Rosena Fung pairs the tough topics of mental health and anxiety with delightfully whimsical and colorful illustrations. Livy is trying to fit in at a new school while navigating the pressure she feels as a child of Chinese immigrants. Viola is Livy’s anxiety personified. I live with my own version of Viola, so I found the story especially relatable. As Livy learns to deal with Viola, we also learn some great tips on dealing with our own anxieties.
"unforgettable . . . will shake middle grade readers to the core"-School Library Journal, starred review
"Beautifully illustrated, relatable, and genuine." -Molly Brooks, creator of Sanity & Tallulah
"Everyone needs to buy this book now. Seriously. Buy it, read it, share it."-Colleen Nelson, author and teacher
Honest and funny, this award-winning graphic novel from a
debut creator is a refreshingly real exploration of mental health,
cultural differences, and the trials of middle school.
Livy
is already having trouble fitting in as the new girl at school-and then
there's Viola. Viola is Livy's anxiety brought to life, a shadowy twin
that…
I’ve always enjoyed reading true stories and stories that feel like they could be true. I enjoy learning about other people’s lives and experiences. If a character’s life experiences have been very different than my own, it is eye-opening and informative. If we’ve had similar experiences it helps me feel less alone. When writing, I usually draw inspiration from my own life experiences. With AWOL, I wanted to share military family culture and help readers affected by PTSD feel less alone.
I love Stargazing! On its surface, Stargazing is about friendship and family but it has many layers, making it the perfect book to read again and again. The story of Christine and Moon touches on the diverse experiences of growing up Asian in America, jealousy & conflict, social expectations & feeling comfortable in your own skin, and a little bit of magic. Except the magic turns out to be symptoms of a serious medical condition. With writing as beautiful as the art, this is a story not to be missed!
Moon is everything Christine isn't. She's confident, impulsive, artistic . . . and though they both grew up in the same Chinese-American suburb, Moon is somehow unlike anyone Christine has ever known.
But after Moon moves in next door, these unlikely friends are soon best friends, sharing their favorite music videos and painting their toenails when Christine's strict parents aren't around. Moon even tells Christine her deepest secret: that she has visions, sometimes, of celestial beings who speak to her from the stars. Who reassure her that earth isn't where she really belongs.
Moon's visions have an all-too-earthly root, however,…
My name is Kelly Fernández (she/her) and I’ve been making comics since 2014. I’vealways been fascinated by stories about ghosts, monsters, and witches because I grewup in a family that believes in them. While writing my graphic novel Manu,Iresearchedand spoke to Latinx friends and colleagues about their personal experiences withbrujería (the Spanish word for witchcraft) to try and learn more about it across differentcultures. I love comics because, like oral storytelling, it’s just another way for people toshare their stories with each other!
The setting, characters, and lore in Snapdragon are so refreshing, that I consider this amust-read for fantasy fans. It’s about a middle-school outcast named Snapdragon (or just “Snap”) who befriends the local witch, Jacks. Leyh’s story seamlessly bounces backbetween the present, the past, and Snap’s creepy stories about the ghost who hauntsher family: One-Eyed Tom. This is a fun book with a lot to chew on!
And when Snap's dog goes missing, the first place she looks is the witch's house. She finds her dog there, recovering from being hit by a car, in the care of a woman named Jacks. She is a crocks-wearing, internet-savvy older woman who's collects roadkill, put their spirits to rest, and cleans and sells their articulated skeletons online.
They make a deal: If Jacks teaches Snap how to take care of a crate of orphaned baby opossums that Snap rescued, Snap will assist Jacks with her work. But as Snap starts to gain an appreciation…
I’ve always been fascinated with the first-person voice, the way it magically pulls us into a story through the character’s/narrator’s perspective, and how when done well, can feel so natural and personal. I’ve tried to write in this perspective over the years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I hope I have done it adequately with this current novel. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert when it comes to the first-person, but I am an interested participant. I am a creative writing professor, but I am also a student of writing and always will be. The more I investigate, the more I read, the more I learn. Focusing on this topic has been no exception.
Since my own book is marketed for young readers (and adults BTW) I thought I’d give a nod to one of the voices in that genre that got set in my brain years ago.
Philbrick’s voice in Max the Mighty might be my favorite young reader first-person voice. Told in retrospect, Maxwell’s voice is both wise and self-effacing, and believable from the jump. “...even though I’m a big dude with a face like a moon and ears that stick out like radar scoops…I’m a real weenie. A yellow-bellied sapsucker. A gigantic wuss. A coward.”
The voice carries the banner of strength in the vulnerability of the human condition. A lesson we should hold dear to our heart. Different is cool. Different is good. This book and its voice are timeless.
A companion to Newbery Honor winning author Rodman Philbrick's Freak the Mighty. This is the dramatic, heart-wrenching tale of Max and Worm, two outsiders who turn to each other for survival.
Meet Max Kane, the brooding giant-of-a-boy who escaped from his basement hiding place and faced the real world in Freak the Mighty. Still grieving over the loss of his best friend, Kevin, Max finds himself defending a young, solitary girl cruelly nicknamed "Worm" because she loves to read. And when Max gets blamed for a horrific crime, he and Worm flee across America--hunted by the police and pursued by…
All my life, I’ve struggled with accepting who I am. It’s no secret that the Vietnam War was unpopular in America; as such, I spent my adolescence hiding who I was. Literature like this didn’t exist when I was a kid. If it had, I think I would’ve seen myself differently. As a writer, I explore similar themes in my work and highlight the importance of discussing how our childhood experiences (good and bad) shape us. Uniformity is a destroyer of identity; my mission is to show how loving what makes us different allows us to love the differences we see in others.
April is the kind of character everyone roots for. She’s sixteen and fending for herself after her crappy father abandoned her in a motor home with no engine.
Teens who grow up like April have grit built into their DNA, and when she takes off for a new life, she soars. The problem is, our past has a way of dragging us backward, and seeing April fight to keep the life and friends she’s built is what makes you keep turning the pages. Oh, and also, she has a beautiful skill. April can sing.
Reading this book is akin to watching a flower bloom; you can’t help but be in awe.
Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorless motorhome that her father won in a poker game. Failing out of school, picking up shifts at Margo's diner, she's left fending for herself in a town where she's never quite felt at home. When she "borrows" her neighbor's car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that's all hers.
I lived an isolated and sometimes nomadic adolescence. My struggling single mother had untreated paranoid schizophrenia and believed herself to be a prophet. The world, as she saw it, was a strange and scary place, and she raised me and my sister to believe as she did. But being an avid reader and artist, I would escape into my own fantasy worlds to find hope and meaning. Now, as an adult, I use my art and writing to make sense of trauma, and I hope my stories can inspire and empower the people who read them.
This one was all about the surreal atmosphere and haunting artwork for me.
Two young women and a cat go on a roadtrip through a dark, dreamlike American west, encountering strange people and places along the way. The bleak, nightmare-tinged landscapes were my favorite part and inspired the way I drew my desert scenes in my graphic novel.
The duo embarks on a long drive to nowhere, but strange happenings - some whimsical, some terrifying - seem to follow them no matter where they go.
Bea and Lou are both looking for something on the road, and the journey itself may turn out to be exactly what they need.
This magical realistic adventure is rich with suspense and heartbreak; startling revelations about betrayal, sexual assault, and death; and exquisite examples of deeply human connections that will stay with readers long after the final gorgeously illustrated page.
I’m a Canadian kids’ author, and I’ve written a few books about kids longing for absent parents. There’s nothing more compelling and powerful for me than a book about a young person searching for a significant adult. It wasn’t part of my growing-up experience, but I know it is the truth for so many kids who would identify with the kids in these novels. There are so many excellent MG novels on this topic that it was hard for me to narrow it down to these five books. I love cheering on kids who struggle, and Opal, Chirp, David, Lucky, and Parvana are among my favorite book kids.
After I read this book, #1 in a trilogy, I wrote to the author (something I rarely do), enthusing about how much I loved almost-orphan Lucky and her inspiring, tragic, hopeful, and heartwarming story. Ten-year-old Lucky’s greatest fear is that she’ll end up in an orphanage following the death of her mother, leaving Lucky to be raised by her absentee father’s ex-wife, Brigitte.
I was drawn into the lives of each of the splendidly flawed, quirky, and very real people in Lucky’s life, but it’s Lucky herself who I fell in love with because she’s so believably innocent and imperfect, working hard, with the support of her friends of all ages, to find her way in her tiny world of Hardpan, population 43.
Lucky, age ten, can't wait another day. The meanness gland in her heart and the crevices full of questions in her brain make running away from Hard Pan, California (population 43), the rock-bottom only choice she has.
It's all Brigitte's fault -- for wanting to go back to France. Guardians are supposed to stay put and look after girls in their care! Instead Lucky is sure that she'll be abandoned to some orphanage in Los Angeles where her beloved dog, HMS Beagle, won't be allowed. She'll have to lose her friends Miles, who lives on cookies, and Lincoln, future U.S.…
As a writer, I strive to create stories that I wish I had found on shelves when I was younger. In that same way, every title on this list not only brings new ways to find adventures through reading, but will hopefully leave young readers with new skills to face the world around them. We often think just cause a story has fantastical elements that it makes them detached from reality, but give any of these a read and you'll find, the farther it is from real life, the brighter the common themes we all share shine through.
Got a kid with a want for the supernatural? May and Bream's heartfelt approach to cryptids and the supernatural make a perfect mix to carry this compelling and page-turning book. Perfect to share among friend groups and explore what it is to belong and how we can all help each other even past our differences.
Six kids search for a new place to call home in this middle grade graphic novel debut by comic creators Cait May and Trevor Bream, for fans of Marvel's Runaways and The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag. Another Kind is not your average monster story.
Tucked away in a government facility nicknamed the Playroom, six not-quite-human kids learn to control their strange and unpredictable abilities. Life is good-or safe, at least-hidden from the prying eyes of a judgmental world.
That is, until a security breach forces them out of their home and into the path of the Collector, a…
I am a long-time journalist and have been passionate about understanding history ever since taking a wonderful AP course in European history in high school. I have read many historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, so it makes sense that my first novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, is historical fiction. To be a good journalist and citizen, you have to know and understand history to inform your reporting and try to prevent the bad moments of history from repeating themselves.
James is an inventive retelling of the Huckleberry Finn saga from the point of view of a slave who lives on the same Virginia plantation as Huck Finn. James runs away when he learns he is about to be sold and separated from his beloved wife and daughter. Huck Finn finds James hiding in a nearby cave, and together, they embark on many adventures and close calls.
I’m not going to spoil the ending for you; suffice it to say that James divulges a startling secret to Huck as he tries to elude a massive manhunt just as the country plunges into civil war. This book kept me glued to each page.
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…
