Bold and Brave: Novels with Daring Young Protagonists for Adult Readers
There's something truly wonderful about intrepid young narrators in novels. The books below feature strong kiddos and teens with spunk and smarts, who navigate their lives with curiosity, wit and courage. When life gets you down, these are great ways to rediscover the hopefulness and resiliency of youth. alh 6/2025
It is the summer of 1950-and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poisons, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp…
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling,…
In 1976 England, 10-year-old friends Grace and Tilly, after their neighbor Mrs. Creasy goes missing, decide to take matters into their own hands and find her and bring her home, going door to door in search of clues and soon discovering that…
A debut novel by an award-winning writer follows the darkly comic experiences of a precocious 12-year-old girl named Elvis who worries about her troubled family and tries to figure out her place in the world in the aftermath of her mother's…
Curious about the grasshoppers in her backyard in rural Texas, 11-year-old Calpurnia turns to her avid naturalist grandfather for information and ends up with a newfound respect for the natural world, the way it operates, and the similarities it…
Izzy Spellman may be the narrator/main character in this wonderfully funny novel about a highly functioning yet supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators, but my favorite is her younger tween sister Rae, the reason for this book being…
In 1878, Mattie Ross is just fourteen when the coward Tom Chaney shoots her father in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 cash. Filled with an unwavering urge to avenge her father’s blood, Mattie finds and, after some…
This is also a wonderful single-season streaming series on Netflix (because truly, nothing gold can stay). When London is overrun by malevolent spirits, psychically gifted 15-year-old Lucy Carlisle joins a talented group of young paranormal…
Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the “wastelands” of Mississippi to live with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick. So she hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to…
Eleven-year-old Delphine is like a mother to her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern. She's had to be, ever since their mother, Cecile, left them seven years ago for a radical new life in California. But when the sisters arrive from Brooklyn to…
The gold standard for girlhood spunk, Anne's story is always worth another read (or re-watch the wonderful CBC series!). In 1876, Anne Shirley is an eleven-year-old orphan who has hung on determinedly to an optimistic spirit and a wildly creative…
In 1917, after inheriting her uncle's homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa to make a home for herself. In the beautiful but harsh setting, she has less than a year to fence and cultivate the land in…
An observant ten-year-old, Alix catches more than her parents and older sister suspect. Over their summer break, Alix's mother plans to finish her novel, her father wants to cook on the grill and watch cricket, and her fifteen-year-old sister hopes…
Twelve-year-old genius cartographer Tecumseh Sparrow (T.S.) Spivet receives an unexpected prestigious award from the Smithsonian and life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild…
