Realistic Fiction

Realistic Fiction genre

Wait For Me

Mina is the perfect daughter. Bound for Harvard, president of the honor society, straight A student, all while she works at her family’s dry cleaners and helps care for her hearing-impaired little sister. On the outside, Mina does everything right. On the inside, Mina knows the truth. Her life is a lie. At the height of a heat wave, the summer before her senior year, Mina meets the one person to whom she cannot lie. Ysrael, a young migrant worker who dreams of becoming a musician, comes to work at the dry cleaners and asks Mina the one question that scares her the most. What does she want? Mina finds herself torn between living her mother’s dreams, caring for her younger sister, grasping the love that Ysrael offers, and the most difficult of all, living a life that is true. With sensitivity and grace, An Na weaves an intriguing story of a young woman caught in the threads of secrets and lies, struggling for love and finding a voice of her own.

Slant

Thirteen-year-old Lauren, a Korean-American adoptee, is tired of being called “slant” and “gook,” and longs to have plastic surgery on her eyes, but when her father finds out about her wish–and a long-kept secret about her mother’s death is revealed–Lauren starts to question some of her own assumptions.

Josias, Hold the Book

Every Morning Josias is hard at work in the family’s garden under the hot Haitian sun. And every morning he sees his friend Chrislove walk to school. When will you join us to hold the book? asks Chrislove. But Josias has a garden to tend and no time to learn to read and write, especially now that the garden is failing. Josias can’t figure out why the beans aren’t growing. Without beans, there may not be enough food for his family. He tries giving the beans more water. He tries working more fertilizer into the soil. Still, the garden shows no sign of life. One morning, when Chrislove asks again when his friend plans to come to school, Josias wonders if a book might hold the solution to his problem.

Featured in Volume I, Issue 2 of WOW Review.

La Línea

When fifteen-year-old Miguel’s time finally comes to leave his poor Mexican village, cross the border without getting caught, and join his parents in California, his younger sister’s determination to join him imperils them both.

Take a closer look at La Línea as examined in WOW Review.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author’s own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character’s art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

Featured in Volume I, Issue 2 of WOW Review.

Playing Loteria / El juego de la loteria

A boy has a good time attending a fair with his grandmother in San Luis de La Paz, Mexico, as she teaches him Spanish words and phrases and he teaches her English.

Read more about Playing Loteria in Volume 1, Issue 3 of WOW Review: Reading Across Cultures.

This book has been included in WOW’s Language and Learning: Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Booklist. For our current list, visit our Booklist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.

Featured in August 2023’s WOW Dozen for books about Language Learning and Communication.

The White Darkness

I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous, since he’s been dead for ninety years. But look at it this way. In ninety years I’ll be dead, too, and the age difference won’t matter.

Sym is not your average teenage girl. She is obsessed with the Antarctic and the brave, romantic figure of Captain Oates from Scott’s doomed expedition to the South Pole. In fact, Oates is the secret confidant to whom she spills all her hopes and fears.

But Sym’s uncle Victor is even more obsessed—and when he takes her on a dream trip into the bleak Antarctic wilderness, it turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival that will challenge everything she knows and loves.

In her first contemporary young adult novel, Carnegie Medalist and three-time Whitbread Award winner Geraldine McCaughrean delivers a spellbinding journey into the frozen heart of darkness.

Featured in Volume I, Issue 2 of WOW Review.

And What Comes after a Thousand?

Otto and Lisa are special friends. Otto may be old, but he can still spit cherry pits, make slingshots and grow delicious raspberries. He and Lisa share a fascination with numbers, tell stories, and gaze at the stars. But when Otto gets ill and dies, Lisa struggles to understand. Her rage, confusion and mourning are reflected in the heartwarming illustrations, as she slowly comes to understand that while people die, memories last forever.

Once Upon a Wedding

The bride and groom had always dreamed of having little angels in their wedding party. Instead they get Agnes, John, and Paul. On the day of the wedding, Agnes wants to be a bride, not a flower girl; John discovers a loose tooth; and Paul has a serious case of ants in his pants. All three find out that a wedding, while beautiful, can get a bit boring. It’s much more fun to play African jungle under the banquet tables.

Fight Game

When rogue gypsy boy Freedom Smith runs into trouble with the law, he strikes a deal with the police: Instead of going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he’ll go undercover — and underground — using his incredible strength and boxing skills to infiltrate a nefarious, high-tech fight club known as The Bear Pit. His mission: to save other street children from the terrible fate the Pit has in store for them. Freedom thinks he can trust Java, his newfound friend, with his secret life. If only he knew that this high-spirited, upper-class girl has a secret of her own….