If you liked RATS SAW GOD
by Rob Thomas,
I also recommend:
If you liked RATS SAW GOD
by Rob Thomas,
I also recommend:
(Books marked by * are available in our library)
If you liked RATS
SAW GOD by Rob Thomas
List Prepared By Cathy Belben,
Librarian, Burlington-Edison High School
Updated February 2002
*Amis, Martin. THE
RACHEL PAPERS.
On the brink of his twentieth birthday, Charles Highway
preps for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the
seduction of a girl named Rachel--a girl who tests his cynicism when finds
himself falling in love with her.
*Anderson, Laurie Halse. SPEAK.
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a
devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school, which she writes
about with wry humor.
*Black, Jonah.
The Black Book (Diary of a Teenage Stud) Volume I:
Girls, Girls, Girls.
In the first volume, "Girls, Girls,
Girls," Jonah reveals his difficulty in separating his rich imaginary life
with the real world. Between writing about his steamy, disturbing encounters
with the beautiful and possibly made-up Sophie, Jonah also documents some cold,
hard facts about himself: he was expelled from his Pennsylvania boarding school,
his former Florida high school is forcing him to repeat 11th grade, and his mom
is a scary New Age sex therapist who writes books like Hello Penis! Hello,
Vagina! Who wouldn't retreat into a fantasy world? But as Jonah's writing
progresses, he begins to drop hints about his sordid Pennsylvania past, and
savvy readers will be able to start to put together the clues of his unexplained
expulsion. (Jennifer Hubert at Amazon.com)
In this sequel to Girls, Girls, Girls, we
re-enter the mind of Jonah Black, who chronicles his return from boarding
school, his re-entry into his former life, and his struggle to separate fantasy
from reality.
*Black, Jonah.
Diary of a Teenage Stud Volume III:
Run, Jonah, Run.
In Volume III, Jonah hooks up with the girl he
left behind -- the same one who got him expelled from boarding school up north.
*Boylan, James. GETTING
IN.
Dylan travels he east coast in a Winnebago with his father, uncle,
and cousin, to check out colleges and fumble through applications and interviews
in this humorous story about finding the “perfect” college despite having an
imperfect family.
*Brizzi, Enrico. JACK FRUSCIANTE HAS LEFT THE BAND: A LOVE STORY
– WITH ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.
The setting: Bologna, Italy, under a sky "as eloquent as a
block of cast iron." The hero: Alex, a bright and bored 18-year-old. The
genre: coming of age. Alex, anticipating a future of bun-numbing,
bourgeoisie-induced boredom and hopelessly in love, takes up with the briskly
degenerate--albeit empathic--Martino. Drinking, drugging, and rock-and-roll fill
the void left, or created, by Alex's realization of the banality of
existence. (Amazon.com).
*Canty, Kevin. INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN.
Opposites attract in this
story of young lovers who find that they aren't so opposite at all. A religious
youth retreat serves as the meeting place for 17-year-olds Kenny Kolodny and
Junie Williamson. Kenny's mother is a mental patient and his father is a raging
alcoholic. Junie's are successful professionals. While Kenny is a pot smoker who
lives in a filthy apartment and drives a beat-up station wagon, Junie lives in a
Frank Lloyd Wright house in the suburbs and drives a bright red Honda Accord The
two find they share many of the same insecurities, doubts, and troubles, and as
they struggle with feelings of detachment from the world, they create a safe
place in which to cross into adulthood together (review from Amazon.com).
*Chbosky, Stephen. THE
PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER.
Charlie, a freshman in high school, explores the dilemmas
of growing up through a collection of letters he sends to an unknown receiver.
*Clark, Catherine. TRUTH OR DAIRY.
Courtney uses a diary to express her frustration over the fact that
her boyfriend left her in order to go to college.
*Coupland, Douglas.
SHAMPOO PLANET.
In this story of two worlds colliding, those of 1960s
parents and their 1990s offspring, Tyler Johnson, raised in a hippie commune, is
an ambitious twenty-year-old Reagan youth, living in a decaying northwest city
and aspiring to a career with the corporation whose offices his mother once
firebombed.
*Crutcher, Chris. STAYING
FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES.
The daily class discussions about the nature of man, the
existence of God, abortion, organized religion, suicide and other comtemporary
issues serve as a backdrop for a high-school senior's attempt to answer a
friend's dramatic cry for help.
*Dann, Patty. MERMAIDS.
Fourteen-year-old
Charlotte Flax, who is seeking a religious experience, moves with her sister
Kate and their mother to a Massachusetts town.
There Charlotte becomes smitten with a shy young caretaker at the local
convent.
Davis, Terry. IF ROCK AND ROLL WERE A MACHINE.
Sixteen-year-old Bert feels like a nobody, but with the help of two
caring adults, he finds solace and fulfillment in an unlikely, though
believable, combination of motorcycles, racquetball, and writing. (review from
The Horn Book).
*Davis, Terry. VISION
QUEST.
High school senior Louden Swain trains for his senior
year of wrestling and strives to defeat his rival, Brian Gooch.
*Duncan, David James.
THE BROTHERS K.
Story of the Chance family living in the Pacific
Northwest in the early '60s embattled over the ideals represented by baseball
and religion.
*Fuhrman, Chris. THE
DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTER BOYS.
A story about five young friends who are altar boys at
the Blessed Heart Catholic Church in Savannah, Georgia in the early 1970s.
Gallagher, Hugh. TEETH.
The protagonist, Neil, is the sort of hip, jaded, MTV-pumped,
post-postmodern, literary punk who will appeal to street-savvy teens across the
globe, and he's probably the most dentally challenged guy readers will ever
encounter. After a freak accident leaves his teeth in shards in his mouth, Neil
skips his suburban town, leaves his boring parents in the dust, finds a hovel to
call home, crashes classes at a renowned New York City college, and earns his 15
minutes of fame by penning postpunk literary manifestos for a reckless zine
called (what else?) Dusted. (Review from Amazon).
Hedges, Peter. AN
OCEAN IN IOWA.
Seven-year-old Scotty Ocean
lives a middle-class life in Des Moines with his strict father, a judge, his
alcoholic mother, a failed artist, and his two older sisters. "Seven is
going to be my year," he announces at the beginning of the novel, but when
his mother abandons the family shortly after his birthday, Scotty's life begins
to fall apart. He blames himself for her leaving and determines to be better.
When that doesn't bring her back, he starts acting out at school, and finally
embarks on a drastic course of action in order to remain seven forever.
(Amazon).
*Hedges, Peter. WHAT'S
EATING GILBERT GRAPE?
Gilbert Grape struggles to keep his unusual family
together by managing the household for his obese, agoraphobic mother and caring
for his 18 year old developmentally disabled brother.
*Hornburg, Michael. DOWNER'S GROVE.
The story of Chrissie Swanson, a paranoid high school
senior who is trying to take control of the events that will shape her life.
A portrait of suburban America, where everyone is trying to figure out
each other and life in general.
*Hornby, Nick. HIGH FIDELITY.
Recently
dumped by his wealthy girlfriend, record store owner Rob Fleming finds himself
in financial trouble and sets out on a pilgrimage to ask his former girlfriends
where their relationships went wrong and to learn where his life went off track.
*Howe, Norma. THE ADVENTURES OF BLUE AVENGER.
On his sixteenth birthday, still trying to cope with the
unexpected death of his father, David Schumacher decides--or does he--to change
his name to Blue Avenger, hoping to find a way to make a difference in his
Oakland neighborhood and in the world.
*Irving, John. A
PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY.
An eleven-year-old boy, Owen Meany, hits a foul ball that
kills his best friend's mother during a Little League game in 1953.
Owen believes he was God's instrument during the incident.
*Irving, John. THE
WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP.
The son of a famous radical feminist spends his life
struggling with his diverse personal relationships and with his ambition to be a
writer.
McCants, William. ANYTHING
CAN HAPPEN IN HIGH SCHOOL.
Fifteen-year-old T. J. Durant is heartbroken when his summer love,
Janet, dumps him for the senior student-body president. In hopes of recapturing
her affections, T. J. starts a school service club which is successful beyond
his wildest dreams, but his new girlfriend, Janet's jealous boyfriend, and
renewed attention from Janet greatly complicate his life.
*Payne, C.D. YOUTH
IN REVOLT.
Nick Twisp uses his journal to vent his frustrations over
his parent's divorce, his school problems, his girlfriend troubles, and other
annoying aspects of life.
*Perotta, Tom. BAD
HAIRCUT.
These short stories follow Buddy's boyhood and adolescent
adventures trying to understand race relations, sex, and family dynamics.
*Perotta, Tom. ELECTION.
New Jersey high school teacher Mr. McAllister faces a
personal and professional crisis when he decides to fix the student body
election, while at the same time dealing with an unexpected attraction to his
wife's best friend.
*Perotta, Tom. JOE COLLEGE.
Danny's college experience is marked by a series of
mostly humorous events. He works on his father's lunch truck over the summer and
encounters the wrath of a gang of competitors known as the lunch monsters, falls
in "like" with a local non-college girl named Cindy, and must deal
with the repercussions of his relationship with her when he returns to college.
*Powell, Randy. TRIBUTE
TO ANOTHER DEAD ROCK STAR.
For a tribute to his mother, a dead rock star,
fifteen-year-old Grady returns to Seattle, where he faces his mixed feelings for
his retarded younger half-brother Louie while pondering his own future.
Powell, Randy. THE
WHISTLING TOILETS.
When narrator Stan Claxton's
best friend, Ginny, a rising tennis star at 15, is sent home to Seattle for the
summer, her parents hire her friend and former partner to coach her through a
tournament--and to jog her out of a two-month, career-threatening slump.
Something clearly bothers Ginny, and Stan wonders if it's more than teenage
angst and the stress of professional tennis. But how can he help her when he's
so uncertain himself?
*Rennison, Louise. ANGUS, THONGS, AND FULL-FRONTAL SNOGGING.
British teen Georgia Nicholson records her problems with boys,
friends, her baby sister, and her cat in this humorous diary.
*Salzman, Mark. LOST
IN PLACE. (non-fiction).
Salzman describes his hilarious experiences growing up in
the late 70’s and early 80’s in California, when he became obsessed with
Asian culture and learned kung-fu and meditation.
*Sedaris, David. ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY.
Sedaris’s essays are laugh-aloud funny and wry.
In this collection, he describes his experiences living in France and
attempting to learn the language.
*Sedaris, David. NAKED .
Sedaris’s first collection of essays focus on humorous
and unusual experiences he had growing up in North Carolina in a family of 6
children and dealing with his Tourette’s Syndrome, among other problems.
The title essay, “Naked” describes his two-week adventure at a nudist
camp.
*Sheldon, Dyan. CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN.
In her first year at a suburban New Jersey high school, Mary
Elizabeth Cep, who now calls herself "Lola," sets her sights on the
lead in the annual drama production, and finds herself in conflict with the most
popular girl in school.
*Townsend, Sue. THE
ADRIAN MOLE DIARIES.
British teen Adrian Mole keeps a diary to record his
humorous life: his parents’
strange behavior and his own developing love for a classmate, as well as his
attempts to have his (bad) poetry published nationally.
Vizzini, Ned. Teen
Angst? Naaah.
A collection of essays wrtten by the author from age
fifteen to seventeen in which he shares impressions of school, sports, cool
people, boring people, friends, family, money, music, and obsessions.
*Weisberg, Joe. 10th GRADE.
Sophomore Jeremy Reskin navigates his way through the
dangerous and often humorous terrain of sophomore year, maintaining a journal to
record his experiences and ideas as he does so.
*Wittlinger, Ellen. HARD LOVE.
After starting to publish a zine in which he writes his
secret feelings about his lonely life and his parents' divorce, sixteen-year-old
John meets an unusual girl and is attracted to her.
*Wittlinger, Ellen.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Each of ten teenagers living in Scrub Harbor, Massacusetts, explores his or her identity at the same time that the local residents consider changing the name of their town