Books About Sadness & Grief for Ages 12–18

Sadness in adolescence can shade into something heavier: isolation, numbness, the feeling that things won't get better. These 3,639 books don't minimize any of it. They meet teenagers where they are and, mostly, show that the heaviness does eventually shift.

3,639 books

Dear America #1

A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple

Kathryn Lasky

Twelve-year-old Mem chronicles her grueling 1620 voyage on the Mayflower and her first challenging year surviving in a s

Ages 8–12

Cat with the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin, The

Susan Goldman Rubin, Ela Weissberger

Ela Weissberger shares her childhood memory of playing a cat in an opera while imprisoned at Terezin, showing how art en

Ages 8–12

A Little Bit Super: With Small Powers Come Big Problems

Leah Henderson, Gary D. Schmidt

Shape-shifting and time travel meet the everyday challenges of growing up in this imaginative collection of poems, stori