Here are 100 books that The Length of a String fans have personally recommended if you like
The Length of a String.
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I am the author of over fifty books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, the Sofia Martinez series, Duck for Turkey Day, Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation, Never Say a Mean Word Again, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence, and The Porridge-Pot Goblin.Many of my books were inspired by my students during my days as a school librarian. Other books were inspired by my work as a Jewish educator in synagogue settings. I read voraciously and review for the Sydney Taylor Shmooze, an online blog about Jewish books.
When her parents decide to renovate a run-down motel in upstate New York, eleven-year-old Miriam must begin her life anew in a community unfamiliar with Jewish people.
She is befriended by her Catholic neighbor, Kate, and together they scheme to save two businesses in financial trouble. I loved the way this book built interfaith bonds between people, respecting everyone’s traditions. Readers will enjoy watching Miriam as she learns new strengths and interacts with family.
With the help of her Catholic friend, an eleven-year-old Jewish girl creates a provocative local tourist attraction to save her family's failing motel.
Buying and moving into the run-down Jewel Motor Inn in upstate New York wasn't eleven-year-old Miriam Brockman's dream, but at least it's an adventure. Miriam befriends Kate, whose grandmother owns the diner next door, and finds comfort in the company of Maria, the motel's housekeeper, and her Uncle Mordy, who comes to help out for the summer. She spends her free time helping Kate's grandmother make her famous grape pies and begins to face her fears by…
I am the author of over fifty books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, the Sofia Martinez series, Duck for Turkey Day, Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation, Never Say a Mean Word Again, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence, and The Porridge-Pot Goblin.Many of my books were inspired by my students during my days as a school librarian. Other books were inspired by my work as a Jewish educator in synagogue settings. I read voraciously and review for the Sydney Taylor Shmooze, an online blog about Jewish books.
The Prince of Steel Pierbegins with a line which immediately grabbed my attention: “It’s nine o’clock on Friday morning and Mrs. Goldberg is definitely dead.”
Joey, the main character, is on vacation in Atlantic City and helping out at his grandparents’ hotel. He is a self-conscious boy who wants to prove to his big Jewish family that he is more than a “squirt.” Along the way he gets himself into unexpected trouble with mobsters in Atlantic City.
Set during the 1970’s, this book features an endearing protagonist navigating adolescence to learn what family and Jewish tradition mean to him. I particularly enjoyed Joey’s honesty as he observes his own behavior and struggles to create a new self-image.
A young teen falls in with the mob, and learns a lesson about what kind of person he wants to be
In The Prince of Steel Pier, Joey Goodman is spending the summer at his grandparents’ struggling hotel in Atlantic City, a tourist destination on the decline. Nobody in Joey’s big Jewish family takes him seriously, so when Joey’s Skee-Ball skills land him an unusual job offer from a local mobster, he’s thrilled to be treated like “one of the guys,” and develops a major crush on an older girl in the process. Eventually disillusioned by the mob’s bravado, and…
I am the author of over fifty books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, the Sofia Martinez series, Duck for Turkey Day, Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation, Never Say a Mean Word Again, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence, and The Porridge-Pot Goblin.Many of my books were inspired by my students during my days as a school librarian. Other books were inspired by my work as a Jewish educator in synagogue settings. I read voraciously and review for the Sydney Taylor Shmooze, an online blog about Jewish books.
Half Jewish and half Chinese, Lauren doubts herself after an insensitive music teacher says she belongs in the chorus of the school musical because she doesn’t look American enough for the leading role.
Tara, Lauren’s best friend, is cast as the lead instead. Lauren isn’t sure she can hide her own disappointment to support her friend. With the help of her two grandmothers who share wisdom from both of their traditions, Lauren learns to claim her identity and believe in her own considerable talents.
As a reader, I personally identified with Lauren’s love of singing and was rooting for her every step of the way.
A multicultural story full of heart and hilarity about what it means to be all-American.
Lauren and her best friend, Tara, have always done absolutely everything together. So when they don't have any classes together in sixth grade, it's disastrous. The solution? Trying out for the school play. Lauren, who loves to sing, wonders if maybe, just maybe, she will be the star instead of Tara this time.But when the show is cast, Lauren lands in the ensemble, while Tara scores the lead role. Their teacher explains: Lauren just doesn't look the part of the all-American girl. What audience would…
I am the author of over fifty books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, the Sofia Martinez series, Duck for Turkey Day, Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation, Never Say a Mean Word Again, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence, and The Porridge-Pot Goblin.Many of my books were inspired by my students during my days as a school librarian. Other books were inspired by my work as a Jewish educator in synagogue settings. I read voraciously and review for the Sydney Taylor Shmooze, an online blog about Jewish books.
This touching novel is written in alternating voices of two pre-teens who become friends on a city bus in Washington, DC.
Gilah is preparing for her Bat Mitzvah and Guillermo is a Salvadoran-American who is adjusting to a new city. Gilah’s narrative is told in prose chapters with a thoughtful internal monologue sharing her struggles to interpret social cues as a neurodiverse adolescent.
Guillermo narrates in verse chapters beautifully capturing his own observations and challenges. This is a story of friendship, family, and learning to embrace yourself.
Every weekday morning, 12-year-old Gilah takes the same public bus to her school in Washington, DC, and this year, she's finally allowed to ride alone. On the very first day, the bus swerves too close to a bicyclist, and Gilah finds the courage to alert the driver to stop the bus. Without a bike, 13-year-old Guillermo starts riding the H4 with Gilah. This is the story of a Salvadoran-American boy who is a poet, a neuro-diverse Jewish girl who loves breakdancing, and how they navigate the detours of their families, their friendship, and their lives. “A well-written and engaging tale…
I wasn’t a sporty teen, but I discovered rock climbing in my twenties and that later inspired my first novel, The Art of Holding On and Letting Go. I’m also a social worker, and even though my main character Cara is a competitive climber and the book features gripping (ha!) rock climbing scenes, the story is about much more – love and loss, finding home, the transformative power of nature. Sports and athleticism (or lack thereof) are something we can all relate to. What a great starting point for exploring our multi-faceted lives.
This coming-of-age novel features a sixteen-year-old star baseball playing girl, but that’s just the beginning. Alex is biracial, raised in a white family, and she struggles to find where she fits in. Race, gender, identity, adoption, body image – this novel explores hard-hitting issues with the complexity they deserve. I especially appreciate that the author wrote from her own experience as a transracial adoptee.
"Transracial adoption is never oversimplified, airbrushed, or sentimentalized, but instead, it's portrayed with bracing honesty as the messy institution it is: rearranging families, blending cultural and biological DNA, loss and joy. An exceptionally accomplished debut." — Kirkus, starred review
For as long as she can remember, sixteen-year-old Alex Kirtridge has known two things about herself: She's a stellar baseball player. She's adopted.
Alex has had a comfortable childhood in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl in a wealthy white family hasn't been that big a deal. What mattered was that she was a star on the diamond,…
In writingThe Lost Son, which is loosely based on family history, I immersed myself in the history of World War II and in the world between the wars. It was important to me to understand this period from both sides—from the perspective of Germans who were either forced to flee their homeland or witness its destruction from within by a madman, and from the perspective of Americans with German ties who also fought fascism. The stories of ordinary people during this time are far more nuanced than the epic battles that World War II depicted, as the stories of ordinary people often are.
Erika Dreifus’ collection of stories, Quiet Americans, offers a haunting, kaleidoscopic view of the Holocaust as it has reverberated through the lives of generations of American Jews right up to the present. Depicting, among them, a high-ranking Nazi’s wife and a Jewish doctor, a Jewish-American soldier guarding a German POW, and a refugee returning to Europe against the backdrop of the terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, these are stories, characters that have stayed with me even as I read this book more than ten years ago when it debuted. Dreifus is an expert at dissecting and reframing this dark chapter in human history and showing its effects on ordinary people.
A high-ranking Nazi's wife and a Jewish doctor in prewar Berlin. A Jewish immigrant soldier and the German POWs he is assigned to supervise. A refugee returning to Europe for the first time and the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A son of survivors and technology's potential to reveal long-held family secrets. These are some of the characters and conflicts that emerge in QUIET AMERICANS, in stories that reframe familiar questions about what is right and wrong, remembered and repressed, resolved and unending.
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
Okay, this is not a memoir, and Glaser doesn’t have a personal connection with adoption. BUT she is a phenomenal writer and excellent reporter, which means she beautifully tells other people’s stories. And she does so here with so much empathy and integrity. This is the story of the forced relinquishment of a baby boy during the Baby Scoop Era and his journey of reconnecting with his birthmother decades later.
It’s an astounding, heart-wrenching story that highlights the incredible tenacity of a young mother and her stunning fight to keep her baby. This story made me cry….a lot.
The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other.
During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle fell in love and became pregnant. Her enraged family sent her to a maternity home, and after she gave birth,…
I am a book publicist of roughly twenty years, a writer, and a reader. My award-winning short story collection, To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts (Fomite Press, 2017), deals with family, reconciliation, loss, and hope. My first novel, Geographies of the Heart (Fomite Press) was released in January 2022. It’s about the importance of forgiveness, the power of legacies, and the fertile but fragile terrain that is family, the first geography to shape our hearts. I am surrounded by books, live and breathe books, work with books. Lucky me!
Spare and poetic, this beautiful debut novel explores teenage pregnancy, adoption, and secrets. Addie Lockwood knows Roland Rhodes during high school. They live in a small Southern town and develop a friendship over an appreciation of blues music. But later, in their thirties, when they reconnect in California, Addie falls in love with Roland. When she later realizes she’s pregnant, she makes a critical and heartbreaking decision: she doesn’t tell Roland about the baby, whom she names Byrd, and she gives the child up for adoption. But Addie never stops thinking about Byrd, wondering, hoping one day he will fly back her way. This novel is gorgeously written and what an ending.
Chautauqua Prize Finalist, 2015 Crook's Corner Book Prize for Best Debut Novel Set in the American South, 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award, Bronze Medal for Literary Fiction, 2015 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize Long List, 2014 SIBA Book Award Long List, 2015 Balcones Fiction Prize Finalist, 2015
Addie Lockwood believes in books. Roland Rhodes believes in blues guitar. Coming of age in the small-town South of the 1970s, they form a friendship as extraordinary as it is unlikely.
They meet again in their disillusioned thirties, this time in California, where Roland's music career has landed him. Venice Beach is exotic, a…
I am adopted. I am a birth mother and also a mother through adoption. I have lived through all ‘three faces’ of adoption and know how each ‘face’ affects millions of people's lives all over the world. I am passionate that conversations around adoption need to come out of the closet and the secrecy surrounding the subject must disappear. By writing my books, I am on a mission to support adoptees, birth mothers, and adoptive parents and help them realise they are not alone. After publication of my first book in the Survival Without Roots trilogy, I am humbled that people are reaching out to say that reading Book One has helped them so much.
Communication through letters is a lovely way to be able to say what you feel to all those in Gaynor’s life who shunned her, loved her, and abandoned her. She never met some of the recipients, but the feelings and emotions as an adoptee have remained lodged in her memory for years. Her book unearths them and unleashes them through the power of the written word. Gaynor does not hold back and writes her letters with an honesty and a rawness that is touching.
It is the 1960s; a sixteen-year-old girl is in a mother and baby home; her heart is breaking as she prepares to give up her baby for adoption.
Shunned by society, she has no choice.
That baby was me.
Join me on my life’s journey through the letters I have written to everyone who has shared my unique story. Follow me as I find the courage to share this story, from my birth to my unhappy adoption to getting married and becoming a mum and granny.
Learn how I took control of my life after disassociating myself from my past,…
I have loved story since I was little, and I’ve curated a life where it has always taken center stage in some or another. I was a high school English teacher for ten years, and have been a college professor for eight. But what really inspires me to write the books I do is my PhD in mythological studies. As a mythologist, I’m lucky enough to be able to see why stories resonate with us for so long and use those same themes and metaphors to write my own.
First of all, Heather’s writing is so clear and so emotional, it’s hard not to get sucked into this world immediately. Second, the characters are so well-rounded.
You can feel their ache radiating off the page. The micro poetry Hannah leaves all over the city breaks my heart every time I read them, but what absolutely sends me is how the girls learned to process grief and all the other Big Emotions by making soup. This book easily has crossover appeal for both teens and adults.
Heather Demetrios's Little Universes is a book about the powerful bond between sisters, the kinds of love that never die, and the journey we all must make through the baffling cruelty and unexpected beauty of human life in an incomprehensible universe.
One wave: that’s all it takes for the rest of Mae and Hannah Winters’ lives to change.
When a tsunami strikes the island where their parents are vacationing, it soon becomes clear that their mom and dad are never coming home. Forced to move to Boston from sunny California for the rest of their senior year, each girl struggles…
