Books and Reading: Sad Books

The true story of Ivan, the gorilla who lived for 27 years in a cage at a Tacoma, Washington shopping mall, is sure to pull at your heartstrings. At first, Ivan is perfectly happy in his cage. But when a new friend begins to open his eyes to the world beyond his box, he discovers a longing to see that world.

Nicknamed “Chirp” because she loves bird-watching in her native Cape Cod, 11-year-old Naomi’s devoted to her free-spirited mother, who’s always been a dancer. Unfortunately, her mother’s inability to cope with a multiple sclerosis diagnosis leads to her hospitalization for depression.

Shy twelve-year-old Nisha, forced to flee her home with her Hindu family during the 1947 partition of India, tries to find her voice and make sense of the world falling apart around her by writing to her deceased Muslim mother in the pages of her diary.

Life is not going well for Cora. Ever since her Irish-immigrant father died six years ago, the 12-year-old, her Mexican-American mom, and her younger sister, Adare, who was “born special” and speaks little, have been living in a series of temporary homes—and now they’re in a grim Brooklyn shelter. Through it all Cora has persevered, getting her sister to and from school and charting (and climbing) the trees around where she’s lived, keeping up her father’s horticultural work. But she’s struggling in math, bullied, friendless, and, after their shelter room is ransacked, homeless.

Jess and Leslie are two lonely souls that create an imaginary kingdom in the woods. While their friendship grows in their magical land, a sudden tragedy changes everything.

Willow is a literal genius, but the only people she's ever been comfortable around are her parents. When they're taken from her in an accident, this odd but brilliant orphan must adjust to a new family and a new life.

Caitlin's Asperger Syndrome makes the world a frustrating and confusing place. When her older brother dies, she must navigate life without her best guide and look for closure from his death.

When their favorite teacher is diagnosed with cancer, best friends Topher, Brand, and Steve skip school to spend an unforgettable day sneaking into her hospital to say goodbye.

Imagine being just as smart, funny, and curious as you are right now, but without the ability to move. This is Melody's world, and this is the story of what happens when new technology allows her to speak for the first time in her life.

When her best friend drowns the day after a fierce argument, Suzy decides two things: that she'll never speak again unless absolutely necessary, and that she'll find out the true reason why such a strong swimmer actually died in the water.

How would you feel if your least favorite person in the world went missing? How would it feel if your friend was blamed for it? Annabelle faces this dilemma and more in the 1940s Pennsylvania wilderness.

Conor is haunted by monsters. One is his mother's cancer, slowly tearing her away from him. The other is a fierce and ancient beast waiting outside his window every night.

Twelve-year-old Arthur finds himself in juvie after hurling a brick at an old man known as the “Junk Man” (because he picks through trash in the neighborhood). Arthur’s punishment is 120 hours of community service working for the Junk Man.

Marin has not spoken to anyone from her old California home and life since the day she left it all behind to go to college in New York. Now it is winter break, and she is spending it in her empty dorm. When her old best friend Mabel finds out, she decides to pay Marin a visit, forcing them both to face everything that has been left unsaid about their relationships and to confront the loneliness that has taken hold of her heart.

ixteen-year-old Tiger Tolliver’s struggles are relatively minor—she’s stuck in secondhand threads and lusts after her biology partner—until her overprotective but loving mother unexpectedly dies.

For more than 200 pages, readers endure with Tiger the two weeks that follow her mother’s death. A minor with no known living relatives, Tiger becomes a ward of the state of Arizona, sharing foster homes with kids who have been abused and abandoned. A gritty, raw account of surviving tragedy one minute at a time.

Readers, meet Marvin and Tyler Johnson, twin high school seniors at a crossroads. Marvin jokes that their family story can feel like the stereotype for black boys. Their father is in jail, and Mama works extra hard to keep the family stable, leaving room for the influence of the streets to creep into their lives. All this is irrelevant when a police officer shoots Tyler dead after he attends a questionable neighborhood party.

Annabel secretly wants to quit modeling; one of her sisters has an eating disorder; and their mother’s past depression makes expressing any unhappiness feel risky. Underneath Annabel’s silence is a secret from the previous spring, a secret that astute readers will decode early on. It’s the reason she’s a social outcast and it makes her cling extra hard to fake cheerfulness.

A novel to savor long after it ends. Silvera packs a powerful emotional punch in this multilayered story told partly in flashbacks by Griffin, who’s mourning the sudden death of his best friend and first love, Theo. The two white teens and their black friend Wade were a “three-dude squad” for years, until Griff and Theo became romantically involved.

As World War II draws to a close, refugees try to escape the war's final dangers, only to find themselves aboard a ship with a target on its hull. Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful.

Spending the summers on her family's private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer.

Told in alternating voices, when Theodore Finch and Violet Markey meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, both teetering on the edge, it's the beginning of an unlikely relationship, a journey to discover the "natural wonders" of the state of Indiana, and two teens' desperate desire to heal and save one another.

First, Starr sees her Khalil get shot by a police officer. Then she sees the media call him a thug, and protestors taking to the streets. To the world, Khalil is a new symbol. But to Starr, he's a friend, and now he's gone.

Mia is knocked into a coma when her family is killed in a car crash. In a ghost-like state witnessing the chaotic aftermath, she must choose whether to join her family in the afterlife, or stay alive with her best friend, boyfriend, and passion for music.

High school loner and filmmaker Greg is forced by his parents to hang out with his childhood friend, Rachel. Which would be awkward enough if she didn't have terminal leukemia.

A new memory-erasing procedure is all the rage, but Aaron can't forget growing up poor in the Bronx, his father's suicide, and the fact that he might maybe possibly have a forbidden crush on his new friend Thomas.