Books for When Your Child Is Too Young for "The Fault in Our Stars"
August Pullman is not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. Sure, he's a huge Star Wars fan, he loves his dog, and he's got a pretty good sense of humor. But August was born with a craniofacial abnormality, a genetic defect that caused his facial features to be severely deformed. His life has never been "normal."
Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability.
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.
Callie loves theater. and while she would totally try out for her middle school's production of "Moon over Mississippi," she's a terrible singer. Instead she's the set designer for the stage crew, and this year she's determined to create a set worthy of Broadway on a middle-school budget.
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.