YA & Middle-Grade Books on Bullying

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New Kid by Jerry Craft is a 2019 graphic novel and winner of the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jim Callahan is responsible for the coloring. Craft is the creator of the 1990 comic strip Mama’s Boyz, as well as Class Act, the 2020 companion story to this book. New Kid focuses on an artistic middle school student who makes friends and builds confidence in himself as he navigates race and class... Read New Kid Summary

Nineteen Minutes is a harrowing, suspenseful narrative about a high school shooting and its aftermath. The mass shooting takes place at Sterling High, in New Hampshire, and lasts for the nineteen minutes of the book’s titular namesake. Peter Houghton, the seventeen-year-old school shooter, changes the lives of many people on March 6, 2007, when he opens fire on his fellow classmates. Peter thinks to stop the bullying that he’s endured since the first day of... Read Nineteen Minutes Summary

One of Us is Lying is a 2017 young-adult thriller by Karen McManus that revolves around the suspicious death of Bayview High School senior Simon Kelleher, author of a gossip app called About That. The story is told from the alternating first person perspectives of four students who served detention with Simon when he died: Bronwyn, Cooper, Nate, and Addy. It explores themes about the corrosive impact of stereotyping and gossip, the value of empathy... Read One of Us is Lying Summary

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Petey is middle grade novel written by Ben Mikaelsen and published in 1998. Mikaelsen is the author of 10 novels for young adults and the winner of several awards for his work. Petey is dedicated to and based on the life of Clyde Cothern, a Montana man with cerebral palsy who was misdiagnosed as intellectually disabled and confined to Montana State Hospital in the 1920s. Mikaelsen and Cothern shared a close personal friendship, and while... Read Petey Summary

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Susan Eloise Hinton was born in 1948 and lives in Oklahoma, where most of her novels are set. She wrote her first novel, The Outsiders, while still in high school. It was published in 1967 and earned Hinton her reputation as a pioneer of the young adult genre. The work “grew out of her dissatisfaction with the way teen-age life was being portrayed in the books she read” (Michaud, Jon. “S.E. Hinton and the Y.A... Read Rumble Fish Summary

Save Me a Seat (2016) is a young adult fiction novel written by Gita Varadarajan and children’s author Sarah Weeks (who is also the author of Pie and So B. It). The novel centers around two main characters, Joe and Ravi, who have both started their first week in the fifth grade at Albert Einstein Elementary School. Ravi and his family have just moved to Hamilton, New Jersey from Bangalore, India, but he believes that school... Read Save Me a Seat Summary

Scrawl (2010) is a young adult novel by American author Mark Shulman, who has written more than 200 books for young readers. Scrawl follows a young teenage bully, Tod Munn, and his experience in detention where he is required by a guidance counselor to write about himself in a journal. In the journal, Tod describes his struggles with coming from a low-income family, low self-esteem, and his problematic behavior at school. The novel was a... Read Scrawl Summary

First published in 2004, Shooter is a young adult novel by Walter Dean Myers about a school shooting. It delves into the perpetrator’s psychological profile as well as the cultural forces behind the violence. The story examines US gun culture, bullying, drug abuse, and dysfunctional family dynamics as causal factors. Myers tells the story through official interviews, police reports, newspaper clippings, and a diary.Myers has written more than 70 books for children and young adults... Read Shooter Summary

David Lubar’s young adult novel Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (2005) was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults in 2006 and a BCCB Blue Ribbon Book. Lubar, a computer programmer-turned-author, has published many books for young readers, including Hidden Talents (1999) and the Weenies series.The story follows 14-year-old Scott Hudson as he navigates his first year of high school with both hilarious and tragic results. Lubar’s novel humorously addresses coming-of-age issues such as changing relationships... Read Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie Summary

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Stargirl is a young adult fiction novel published in 2000 by the American author Jerry Spinelli. In a coming of age narrative, shy eleventh-grader Leo falls in love with Stargirl, a free-spirited newcomer at Mica High. When his fellow students turn against Stargirl—and Leo—he pressures her to become ordinary like everyone else. Over the course of the novel, Leo learns the importance of staying true to yourself. Spinelli explores themes of individuality, kindness, and the... Read Stargirl Summary

Shy, 12-year-old Margaret and her high-spirited friend Elizabeth question their beliefs about WWII when they discover that the brother of their school nemesis is a deserter in Mary Downing Hahn’s middle grade historical fiction novel, Stepping on the Cracks (1991). The novel explores themes of moral ambiguity, war, friendship, and domestic abuse, drawing on Hahn’s childhood memories of growing up in College Park, Maryland. In a short biography at the end of the novel Hahn... Read Stepping on the Cracks Summary