Growing up/realistic fiction

Nugly:  The one thing Nugget, a cute puppy, has ever known to do is love, and his cuteness has always been enough for others to love him back. But when Nugget is put up for adoption, he thinks it's because no one loves him anymore--that he isn't cute anymore. So he does the only thing he can think of: he runs away. Now Nugget is alone on the streets of Boston, where he quickly learns that not everyone is kind. After an unfortunate run-in with another animal leaves him disfigured, he can't rely on his cuteness to get by like he used to. As Nugget learns to navigate his new life, searching for a new family to give all his love . . . will he learn to love himself, too?  FIC ROS

If you read this:  When Brie was younger, her mama used to surprise her with treasure hunts around their island town. After she died three years ago, these became Brie's favorite memories. Now, on her twelfth birthday, her mama has another surprise: a series of letters leading Brie on one last treasure hunt. The first letter guides Brie to a special place. The next urges her to unlock a secret. And the last letter will change life as she knows it.  FIC GET

Starfish:  Bullied and shamed her whole life for being fat, twelve-year-old Ellie finally gains the confidence to stand up for herself, with the help of some wonderful new allies. FIC FIP

Because of the rabbit: On the last night of summer, Emma and her Maine game warden father rescue a small domestic rabbit stuck in a fence; the very next day Emma starts fifth grade after years of being home schooled, excited and apprehensive about making new friends, but she is paired with Jack, a hyperactive boy, who does not seem to fit in with anyone--except that they share a love of animals, which draws them together, because of the rabbit.  FIC LOR

The unlikely story of a pig in the city: Josie Shilling's family is too big, their cramped city house is too small, and she feels like no one's ever on her side. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, her older brother, Tom, brings home a pink, squirmy bundle wrapped in an old football jersey, a piglet he rescued from a nearby farm. Her name is Hamlet.  FIC KEN

Saucy:  When eleven-year-old Becca, a quadruplet, finds a sick piglet on the side of the road, her life is changed forever.  FIC KAD

The Unteachables:  'The Unteachables' never thought they'd find a teacher who had a worse attitude than they did. And Mr. Kermit never thought he would actually care about teaching again. Over the course of a school year, though, room 117 will experience mayhem, destruction--and maybe even a shot at redemption- FIC KOR

Crenshaw: Crenshaw is a cat. He's large, he's outspoken, and he's imaginary. He has come back into Jackson's life to help him. But is an imaginary friend enough to save this family from losing everything? FIC APP

Love like sky: Eleven-year-old Georgie is still adjusting to leaving Atlanta for a small town, having a stepfather, and being unable to get close to her stepsister when her six-year-old sister, Peaches, suddenly becomes very ill.  FIC YOU

Secrets and Scones:  Scarlett, twelve, ended her friendships and activities when her mother started blogging about her every move, but when an elderly neighbor introduces her to cooking, she begins forging new connections.  FIC REM

Reckless Club:  After getting in trouble in the eighth grade, five students are assigned by a their principal to spend the last day of summer helping out in an assisted living home and manage to forge an unexpected bond with the residents and with each other.  FIC VRA

A dog like Daisy: Daisy has only ten weeks to prove her usefulness or else be sent back to the pound. Yet if she goes back, who will protect Colonel Victor from his PTSD attacks? Or save the littler human, Micah, from those infernal ear muzzles he calls earphones? What if no one ever adopts her again? Determined to become the elite protector the colonel needs, Daisy vows to ace the service dog test. She'll accept the ridiculous leash and learn to sit, heel, shake, even do your business, Daisy when told to. But Daisy must first learn how to face her own fears from the past or risk losing the family she's so desperate to guard-again. FIC TUB

Whippoorwill:  In rural New Hampshire, sixteen-year-old Clair Taylor and her neighbor, eighteen-year-old Danny Stewart, fall into an unlikely relationship as they work together to save Wally, a loveable, but mistreated dog kept chained in a junk-filled yard by Danny's cruel father.   FIC MON

Ice Dogs:  In this survival story set in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Vicky and her dog sled team find an injured sledder in the wilderness.  FIC JOH

A million ways home:  When her grandmother and guardian suffers a stroke, twelve-year-old Poppy Parker's life turns upside down--but when she witnesses a murder and has to go into witness protection with Detective Brannigan's mother it becomes hard to believe she will ever find a way home, let alone save Gunner, a beautiful German shepherd with an uncertain future. FIC DOR

Tell me:  Feeling scared and powerless when her father's anger escalates and her parents separate, twelve-year-old Anna spends the summer with her grandmother and decides to make a difference when she sees what seems to be a girl held against her will. FIC BAU

Ellie's Story: a dog's purpose novel:  A story about Ellie, a dog that has been trained for search and rescue since a pup, and her handlers, Jakob and Maya, who are lost in their own way, and how Ellie saves them also. FIC CAM

Touch Blue:  When the state of Maine threatens to shut down their island's one-room schoolhouse because of dwindling enrollment, eleven-year-old Tess, a strong believer in luck, and her family take in a trumpet-playing foster child, to increase the school's population.  FIC LOR

Fish in a Tree: Ally's greatest fear is that everyone will find out she is as dumb as they think she is because she still doesn't know how to read.  FIC HUN

My Secret Guide to Paris:  Twelve-year-old Nora has always dreamed of going to Paris with her grandmother, but when her grandmother dies it seems like Paris is gone with her--until Nora finds three airline tickets in a trunk, and sets out to persuade her mother to use them.  FIC SCH

The Truth about Twinkie Pie:  When twelve-year-old GiGi and her big sister DiDi move to Long Island from South Carolina for GiGi to attend a fancy new private school, GiGi has a new recipe for success and makes new friends, but then discovers a family secret that turns her life upside-down.  FIC YEH

Honey:  It's always been just Melody and her father. But when she overhears her dad calling someone "honey," she decides it's up to her and her best friend, Nick, to discover who it is.  FIC WEE

A Dog Called Homeless:  Fifth-grader Cally Louise Fisher stops talking, partly because her father and brother never speak of her mother who died a year earlier, but visions of her mother, friendships with a homeless man and a disabled boy, and a huge dog ensure that she still communicates.  FIC LEA

Jessica Darling's It List:  The day before seventh grade begins, twelve-year-old Jessica Darling gets a list from her sister, whose popularity and beauty made her a junior-high standout, but when she tries to follow it, all goes awry, including losing her best friend.  FIC MCC

Private Thoughts of Amelia E Rye:  Growing up in a small town in upstate New York during the 1960s, a young girl, unwanted by her mother, searches for love and acceptance.  FIC SHI

Lula Bell on Geekdom, Freakdom, and the Challeges of Bad Hair:  Ten-year-old Lula Bell Bonner tries to fade into the background to avoid a bully, but after her beloved grandmother's death, Lula Bell understands about letting her light shine in the darkness.  FIC PAY

Can You Say Catastrophe?  Thirteen-year-old April Sinclair gets her first two kisses--from two different boys--and is not sure how she feels about either one, and cannot wait to be at summer camp with her two best friends and away from her embarrassing family, but her parents cancel her camp plans in lieu of a family RV trip.  FIC FRI

The One and Only Ivan:  When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life.  FIC APP

Rebel McKenzie:  When feisty twelve-year-old Rebel McKenzie, an aspiring paleontologist, goes to spend the summer taking care of her older sister's seven-year-old son at the mobile home park in Frog Level, Virginia, she never expects to enter a beauty pageant or meet a hand model.  FIC RAN

Reel Life Starring Us:  Dina, the new girl at Rockwood Hills Junior High, is doing a video project with the incredibly popular Chelsea, and while Dina hopes that this will be her opportunity to improve her social life, Chelsea is more focused on family issues than anything happening at school.  FIC GRE

Leanin' Dog:  Eleven-year-old Dessa Dean, mourning the death of her mother, finds an injured dog on her porch, which allows both Dessa and the dog to heal together with a friendship that shapes both of their lives.  FIC NUZ

Barn Boot Blues:  When her parents swap urban life in Minneapolis for rural life on a farm 100 miles away, twelve-year-old Taylor feels as if she is living on another planet.  FIC FRI

Water Balloon:  Marley's parents have separated and her relationship with her best friends is disintegrating.  She's also being forced into the worst summer job ever.  The only bright spot is the cute boy next door.  With all these changes, can Marley get a grip on her past and her future?  FIC VER

This is Not a Drill:  Two teens must work together to protect a class of first-graders when a soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder takes them hostage.  FIC MCD

Choke:  Desperate to fit in and thrilled to be befriended by Nina, the new girl at school, Windy must decide if she is willing to play the "choking game" in order to stay friends with Nina.  FIC LOP

Buddy:  Twelve-year-old Li'l T and his family face great losses caused by Hurricane Katrina, including leaving Buddy, their very special, three-legged dog, behind when they must evacuate.  FIC HER

Hidden:  Years after Darra Monson's father stole a minivan with Wren Abbott hiding in the back, the girls come face to face at summer camp and together they try to work through what happened to them and the impact it had on their lives.  FIC FRO

Chomp:  When the difficult star of the reality television show "Expedition Survival" disappears while filming an episode in the Florida Everglades using animals from the wildlife refuge run by Wahoo Crane's family, Wahoo and classmate Tuna Gordon set out to find him while avoiding Tuna's gun-happy father.  FIC HIA

Education of Hailey Kendrick:  Dating a popular boy and adhering to every rule ever written, a high school senior at an elite Vermont boarding school begins to shed her good girl identity after an angry incident with her distant father.  FIC COO

Little Blog on the Prairie: Thirteen-year-old Genevieve's summer at a frontier family history camp in Wyoming with her parents and brother is filled with surprises, which she reports to friends back home on the cell phone she sneaked in, and which they turn into a blog. FIC BEL

Pie:  Alice's Aunt Polly passes away and entrusts the recipe for her world-famous pie crust to her cat, which she leaves in Alice's care, and as everyone, including Alice, tries to discover the secret ingredients, Alice learns some important lessons about faith, love, and family.  FIC WEE

Wild Life:  Being sent to stay with grandparents he hardly knows is hard enough for twelve-year-old Eric, whose parents are deployed to Iraq, but his grandfather's hostility and the threat of losing the dog he rescues causes Eric to run away.  FIC DEF

Naked Mole-Rat Letters:  Twelve-year-old Frankie sends fabricated e-mail letters in an attempt to end her widowed father's long-distance romance with a Washington, D.C., zookeeper. FIC AMA

Rachel Spinelli Punched Me in the Face:  When fourteen-year-old Zachary and his father move to Falls, Connecticut, he spends a summer falling in love, coming to terms with his mother's absence, and forming eclectic friendships.  FIC ACA

Ghetto Cowboy:  Twelve-year-old Cole's behavior causes his mother to drive him from Detroit to Philadelphia to live with a father he has never known, but who soon has Cole involved with a group of African-American "cowboys" who rescue horses and use them to steer youths away from drugs and gangs.  FIC NER

Sparrow Road:  Twelve-year-old Raine spends the summer at a mysterious artists colony and discovers a secret about her past.  FIC OCO

How I Nicky Flynn finally get a life and a dog:  Nicky Flynn's life gets all turned around when his parents divorce and he is forced to start a new life in a new town and school; but when his mother brings home Reggie, a former seeing-eye dog, from a shelter, Nicky begins to put his life back into perspective.  FIC COR

True (...Sort of) : For most of her eleven years, Delly has been in trouble without knowing why, until her little brother, R.B., and a strange, silent new friend, Ferris, help her find a way to be good--and happy--again.  FIC HAN

Deep Down Popular : In a small, Virginia town, sixth-grader Jessie Lou Ferguson has a crush on the hugely popular Conrad Parker Smith, and when he suddenly develops a medical problem and the teacher asks Jessie Lou to help him, they become friends, to her surprise.  FIC STO

Waiting for Normal : Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.  FIC CON

Dairy Queen : After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.  (series)  FIC MUR

Lock & Key : When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby winds up living with Cora, the sister she has not seen for ten years, and learns about Cora's new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her when she needs it, and that she too has something to offer others.  FIC DES

Lucky : As Phoebe and her clique of privileged girlfriends get ready to graduate from eighth grade, a financial scandal threatens her family's security--as well as Phoebe's social status--but ultimately it teaches her the real meaning of friendship.  FIC VAI

Violet  Raines Almost got Struck by Lightning : In 1970's Florida, eleven-year-old Violet's world is turned upside down by the arrival of a girl from Detroit who seems bent on stealing Violet's best friends.  FIC HAW

A Crooked Kind of Perfect : Ten-year-old Zoe Elias, who longs to play the piano but must resign herself to learning the organ, instead, finds that her musicianship has a positive impact on her workaholic mother, her jittery father, and her school social life.  FIC URB

Suite Scarlett : Fifteen-year-old Scarlett Marvin is stuck in New York City for the summer working at her quirky family's historic hotel, but her brother's attractive new friend and a seasonal guest who offers her an intriguing and challenging writing project improve her outlook.  (series)  FIC JOH

The Mailbox : When twelve-year-old Gabe tries to hide his uncle's death from the local authorities, he is not prepared for what happens when this secret is discovered.  FIC SHA

Sand Dollar Summer : When twelve-year-old Lise spends the summer on an island in Maine with her self-reliant mother and bright--but oddly mute--younger brother, her formerly safe world is complicated by an aged Indian neighbor, her mother's childhood friend, and a hurricane.  FIC JON

Four things my geeky-jock-of-a-best-friend must do in Europe : Written in the form of letters to her best friend, Delia, back home, Brady tells of her adventures while on a Mediterranean cruise with her mother and of her progress on Delia's list of things she must do, including the search for a code red "Euro-hottie."  FIC HAR

The Lucky Ones:  A teen, plagued with fighting parents, an annoying older sister, a new girl, and other obstacles, decides she will have to make her own luck.  FIC GRE

Franny Parker:  Through a hot, dry Oklahoma summer, twelve-year-old Franny tends wild animals brought by her neighbors, hears gossip during a weekly quilting bee, befriends a new neighbor who has some big secrets, and learns to hope.  FIC MCK

So B. It : After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is.  FIC WEE

Slob:  Picked on, overweight genius Owen tries to invent a television that can see the past to find out what happened the day his parents were killed.  FIC POT

The Summer I Turned Pretty:  Belly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are very different as she finds herself falling for a boy she has known since childhood.  FIC HAN

My Life in Pink and Green:  When the family's drugstore is failing, seventh-grader Lucy uses her problem-solving talents to come up with a solution that might resuscitate the business, along with helping the environment.  FIC GRE

Callie's Rules:  Eleven-year-old Callie Jones tries to keep track of all the rules for fitting in that other middle school students seem to know, but when the town decides to replace Halloween with an Autumn Festival, Callie leads her large family in an unusual protest.  FIC ZUC

Road to Tater Hill:  At her grandparents' North Carolina mountain home during the summer of 1963, grief-stricken after the death of her newborn sister and isolated by her mother's deepening depression, eleven-year-old Annie Winters finds comfort holding an oblong stone she calls her "rock baby" and befriends a reclusive mountain woman with a devastating secret.  FIC HEM

Signal:  After moving with his emotionally distant father to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, twelve-year-old Owen faces a lonely summer until he meets an abused girl who may be a space alien.  FIC DEF

Lockdown:  Teenage Reese, serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.  FIC MYE

Runaway Twin:  Thirteen-year-old Sunny, accompanied by a stray dog, takes advantage of a windfall to travel from her Nebraska foster home to Enumclaw, Washington, to find the twin sister from whom she was separated at age three.  FIC KEH

Sleepaway Girls:  When the exceptionally people-pleasing Sam spends a summer as a counselor-in-training, she learns how to say no, to stand up for herself, and what it feels like to have a crush on a great guy.  FIC CAL

In a Heartbeat:  Told in their separate voices, Eagan, who has died in a figure-skating accident, becomes a heart donor for Amelia, who then begins taking on some aspects of Eagan's personality.  FIC ELL

The Fashion Disaster that Changed My Life:  Seventh-grader Alli describes in her journal the ups and downs of being in junior high, where she fits in, and what it means to be a real friend.  FIC MYR

Tea Shop Girls:  Thirteen-year-old Annie is thrilled when her grandmother agrees to let her work as a barista at the Steeping Leaf, but as the shop faces possible eviction and Annie begins to drift away from her friends, she fears everything is changing and wonders what she will do if the tea shop closes.  FIC SCH

Kick:  Told in their separate voices, thirteen-year-old soccer star Kevin and police sergeant Brown, who knew his father, try to keep Kevin out of juvenile hall after he is arrested on very serious charges.  FIC MYE

How to Survive Middle School:  When eleven-year-old David Greenberg's best friend makes the start of middle school even worse than he feared it could be, David becomes friends with Penny, who shares his love of television shows and posts one of their skits on YouTube, making them wildly popular--online, at least.  FIC GEP

Rissa Bartholomew's Declaration of Independence:  Having told off all of her old friends at her eleventh birthday party, Rissa starts middle school determined to make new friends while being herself, not simply being part of a "herd."  FIC COM