Classic Coming of Age Stories

Try these books if you are looking for:

• Classics
• Coming of Age Novels
• Uplifting Stories

Hatchet
by Gary Paulsen
YA F PAULSEN
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.

The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
F ORCZY
Who is the elusive and mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel? A master of clever disguises, stealth and elegant escapes -- skills that he uses to rescue doomed French aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. His signature -- a tiny scarlet flower. The Pimpernel's true identity is unknown except to a small group of co-conspirators who work with him and together comprise the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. He is a secret hero who risks his life on a daily basis in order to save countless others. Written a few hundred years after Alexandre Dumas’ works, this book still holds to old standards and captures some of the same adventurous spirit that Dumas’ novels held.

Anne of Green Gables
by L.M. Montgomery
YA F MONTGOMERY
Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, siblings who run a farm in Avonlea, decide to adopt a boy to help on their farm. They are mistakenly sent Anne Shirley, and are obliged to let her stay the night before returning her to the orphanage the next day. Fortunately, Anne wins them over instantly with her charm and eager-to-please nature. Being a child of imagination, Anne takes much joy in life, and the reader can't help but start to see the world through her eyes.

The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
F KIDD
Set in the American South in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act and intensifying racial unrest, Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful story of coming-of-age, of the ability of love to transform our lives, and the often unacknowledged longing for the universal feminine divine. Addressing the wounds of loss, betrayal, and the scarcity of love, Kidd demonstrates the power of women coming together to heal those wounds, to mother each other and themselves, and to create a sanctuary of true family and home.

Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
F MARTEL
Life of Pi is an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). After fighting among the animals, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination.