Books for When Your Child Is Too Young for "The Fault in Our Stars"

This 2007 Newbery Honor Book is a humorous and heartwarming debut about feeling different and finding acceptance.

Raina just wants to be a normal sixth grader. But one night after Girl Scouts she trips and falls, severely injuring her two front teeth, and what follows is a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear, and even a retainer with fake teeth attached.

2013 Stonewall Honor Book

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be "completely" normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

Time drags by for Winnie Foster, an eleven-year-old girl who lives in a house bordering the woods owned by her family. Winnie spends her summer days under the watchful eye of her grandmother.

Caitlin is a bright fifth grader and a gifted artist. She also has Asperger's syndrome, and lives in a world of her own. Her brother, Devon, was the one who always helped her get by. But a middle-school shooting took his life.

In many ways, 11-year-old Hazel is just like any other fifth grader. She's losing patience with her mom, her new school, and her absentee dad. She's entirely committed to Jack, her best friend, the one person who shares her love of baseball, superheroes, and wild imaginings.