novels in verse

In the room beneath a theater stage, the ghosts of Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and other teenage girls who died tragically in Shakespeare's plays, share their experiences and trauma and get the chance to retell the stories of their lives in their own terms.

"When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She's alone--left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten. As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. But Maddie's most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day"--Amazon.

Eleven-year-old Lacey rediscovers life and the soothing power of nature and art after she, her little sister, and mom escape from their controlling and abusive father.

"You can be my boyfriend." It only takes five words to change G?ero's life at the end of seventh grade. The summer becomes extra busy as he learns to balance new band practice with his old crew, Los Bobbys, and being Joanna Padilla's boyfriend. They call her "fregona" because she's tough, always sticking up for her family and keeping the school bully in check. But G?ero sees her softness. Together they cook dollar-store spaghetti and hold hands in the orange grove, learning more about themselves and each other than they could have imagined. But when they start eighth grade, Joanna faces a tragedy that requires G?ero to reconsider what it means to show up for someone you love. Honoring multiple poetic traditions, They Call Her Fregona is a bittersweet first-love story in verse and the highly anticipated follow-up to They Call Me G?ero.

Rynn is adopted and has always felt like something is missing in her life, so when her strained relationship with her adoptive mother reaches a breaking point, Rynn sees it as the opportunity to learn about her birth family. She's surprised to learn that her birth mother is dead, but she has a younger sister who is living in foster care in a nearby town. She desperately wants to meet her biological sister, but she knows if she does, it could tear her adoptive family apart.

Arriving in America, the so-called beautiful country, Anna, a young Taiwanese girl, finds it anything but beautiful as she and her family struggle to make a place for themselves in this world and learn the true meaning of home.

Lonely Cuban-born eleven-year-old Oriol lives in Santa Barbara, California, where she enjoys caring for injured animals, but her budding friendship with Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American winner of a Nobel Prize in Literature, emboldens Oriol, an aspiring writer, to open up and create a world of words for herself.

Employs poetic verse to describe the life of twelve-year-old Rima who lives with her mother and grandmother, but has no rights according to the 1920s-era Cuban government because she was born out of wedlock. Shunned by her father and half-sister who live in wealth, Rima longs to be as free as the horses she rides. Rima decides to fight back against this unfair system, joining with a social activist group known as the mambisas, who fought for Cuba's independence from Spain and who now fight for women's suffrage.

"A comprehensive resource for using novels in verse in classrooms and libraries"--Provided by publisher.

When her best friend's cancer returns in the summer of 1987, none of her usual pursuits--surfing, singing, or reading poetry--can keep thirteen-year-old Ava afloat.