Coming of Age
Junior English
Book Club - Coming of Age - Bildungsroman
Choose 1 of the Book Club novels. All have the common theme of "Coming of Age" or Growing Up.
Coming of Age Essential Questions
How does one find him/herself?
How does one overcome adversity?
What kinds of adversity do people sometimes cause for themselves?
How do friends help with growing up?
Why does "growing up" require understanding or experiencing difficult things?
What are the elements of the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age stories), and how does this novel reflect those elements?
Pieces of Literature
Choose your book club.
Tough Girl Book
Tiffany Templeton is tough. She dresses exclusively in black, buys leather jackets that are several sizes too big, and never backs down from a fight. She's known in her tiny Montana town as Tough Tiff, and after her shoplifting arrest and a stint in a reform school, the nickname is here to stay.
But when she comes back home, Tiffany may not be the same old Tough Tiff that everybody remembers. Her life is different now: her mother keeps her on an even shorter leash than before, she meets with a probation officer once a month, and she's still grieving her father's recent death.
As Tiffany navigates her new life and learns who she wants to be, she must also contend with an overbearing best friend, the geriatric cast of a high-maintenance drama production, her first boyfriend, and a town full of eccentric neighbors--not to mention a dark secret she's been keeping about why the ex-football coach left town.
The Award-Winning Book
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist • A New York Times Bestseller • A USA Today Bestseller • NPR’s Top Ten Best-Ever Teen Novels • TIME magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult Novels of All Time • A PBS Great American Read Selection • Millions of copies sold!
First drink. First prank. First friend. First love.
Last words.
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A modern classic.
The Best Friends Book
*American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to World War II.
*Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
The Vignettes
* A coming-of-age novel by Mexican-American writer, Sandra Cisneros, published in 1984.
* It deals with a young Latina girl, Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago with Chicanos and Puerto Ricans.
* Esperanza is determined to "say goodbye" to her impoverished Latino neighborhood.
* Major themes include her quest for a better life and the importance of her promise to come back for "the ones I left behind."
The Buck Town Book
*A thoughtful, complex and moving story about loss and discovery of identity, love and the ability to change and the restorative powers of nature.
*Seventeen-year-old Pete Shelton's life revolves around helping his friend Abe McMichael build Riverside, a nature preserve dedicated to the memory of Abe's brother, Paul. Then one summer a troubled runaway shows up—a girl named Nora who claims to be Paul's daughter. All her life, Nora has lived with secrets and lies, never knowing anything about her father. Although enemies at first, Pete and Nora slowly begin to piece together their shadowy pasts . . . and discover that their lives intertwine in a way they never imagined.
The Catcher in the Rye
The Classic
The book shows two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world. Holden is struggling to find his place in the world.
Historical Fiction book
In 1964 South Carolina, 14-year-old Lily Own is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father T-Ray, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past.
Graphic Novel
A stunning graphic novel adaptation of Walter Dean Myers's New York Times bestseller Monster.
Monster is a multi-award-winning, provocative coming-of-age story about Steve Harmon, a teenager awaiting trial for a murder and robbery. As Steve acclimates to jail and goes to trial, he envisions how his ordeal would play out on the big screen.
Guy A. Sims, the acclaimed author of the Brotherman series of comic books, collaborated with his brother, the illustrator Dawud Anyabwile, in this thrilling black-and-white graphic novel adaption of Monster.
Monster was the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award recipient, an ALA Best Book, a Coretta Scott King Honor selection, and a National Book Award finalist.
