Books for Teen Girls Who Hate Reading

Adventures in radical libraries

Reading is its own reward. I say that because you have to start with that to get where I’m going to take you. I, generally, don’t care what people read as long as they are reading. Literacy allows you to communicate and understand what’s trying to be communicated to you. It allows you to ‘read between the lines’ and sus out a lie whilst it’s being told. It allows you to read your car lease contract and understand you’re being scammed. It builds patience and empathy. The benefits are endless and too many of our fellow Americans just cannot do it.

Between 30 and 50% of Americans are functionally illiterate. It means they can’t read the average newspaper and understand what’s in it. I give a wide deviation because there are so many studies who spout so many numbers, but we can all agree its a problem. My job as school librarian is to close that gap. There are kids who can’t read, which will require the assistance of a trained professional and phonics and an understanding of dyslexia and learning disabilities. Then there are reluctant readers, who can read, but don’t read and because of it they don’t read well. That’s where I come in.

I’ve always worked with what people call “at risk” populations. Poor kids, kids with a lot going on at home, kids who need a scholarship or college is off the table, kids who are pregnant or got somebody pregnant. For those kids Huckleberry Finn just ain’t gone cut it.

I want to talk about girls. My high school girls who don’t read. If I can hook them I can get make them into readers for the rest of their lives. Below you’ll find my hook ‘em books. These aren’t fantasies. These are contemporary books. Some will find them inappropriate and for that reason I can’t hand sell them like I was able to in the past, but I’ve always felt that if you can live through molestation, abuse, drug addiction, or even rape then you should be able to read a book about someone who is dealing with those issues and overcame them.

These are those books.

The Coldest Winter Ever

This is the OG. This is the book I’ve had to buy several times over every year, one after the other. It hooks my most reluctant readers in the first page and doesn’t let them go until the end. If you read this as a teenager like I did, you’ve been begging for it to be turned into a movie and you’ve heard the rumors of Jada Pinkett Smith adapting the novel before 9/11 and Katrina and now her daughter might even be too old to play Winter. Alas, I think that might be a blessing in disguise because as soon as a book is turned into a movie that mystique is gone. The girls trade this book like a secret being told that no one is supposed to know about. It is the gateway drug to a lifelong love of reading.

I came busting into the world during one of New York's worst snowstorms, so my mother named me Winter. Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets like the curves of her own body. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn't want to go, her street smarts and seductive skills are put to the test of a lifetime. Unwilling to lose, this ghetto girl will do anything to stay on top.

“Are you crazy? The last thing you want to do is make a scene." "Well, I'm gonna make a movie if you don't show me some respect.”

A Piece of Cake

Some of my reluctant readers have lives that are so filled with drama that Anne of Green Gables just won’t do. They also don’t have time for fiction. They want real life with real stories and they’ve been raised on a steady diet of reality TV and something made up just seems trivial. That is when I hit them with biographies. The real deal. It’s important that they see that someone just like them who came up hard can end up soft. They need to know that the adults aren’t just lying to them about how education matters and it will work out in the end. I can’t tell them to keep their noses down and it will work out when I’ve been read too every night as a child and never been hungry. We may share the same color, but we don’t have the same story. Teachers and Librarians, too often, don’t recognize their own privilege. Biographies like this one and Redefining Realness by Janet Mock and Buck by MK Asante all tell stories of overcoming and triumph and going from a life of being controlled by your environment to controlling your own narrative.

This is the heart-wrenching true story of a girl named Cupcake and it begins when, aged eleven, she is orphaned and placed in the 'care' of sadistic foster parents. But there comes a point in her preteen years - maybe it's the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once - when Cupcake's story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark, deeply disturbing journey through hell.

Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. At just 16 she stumbled into the terrifying world of the gangsta, dealing drugs, hustling and only just surviving a drive-by shooting. Ironically, it was Cupcake's rapid descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine addiction that finally saved her. After one four-day crack binge she woke up behind a dumpster. Half-dressed and half-dead, she finally realized she had to change her life or die on the streets - another trash-can addict, another sad statistic.

Astonishingly, Cupcake turned her life around and this is her brutally frank, startlingly funny story. Unlike any memoir you will ever read, A Piece of Cake is a redemptive, gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contemporary urban life and survived it. It is also the most genuinely affecting rollercoaster ride through hell and back that you will ever take.

“Oh, get off the cross!” V shouted when I shared my thoughts with her on the phone. “We need the wood!”

Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat

“When most folks think about the problems of growing up in the hood, they think about what it must feel like to be poor, or hungry, or to have your lights cut off. The struggle nobody talk about is what it feel like to be invisible, or to know in your heart the nobody cares. Mama didn’t want to be famous, she wanted to be seen.”

This one is more recent. I have to be honest and say that I’m not the biggest fan of Ms. Pat’s comedy, but I’m not her audience. Her autobiography though, was funny and real and one of the best I’ve ever read.

Comedian Patricia Williams, who for years went by her street-name "Rabbit," was born and raised in Atlanta’s most troubled neighborhood at the height of the crack epidemic.

One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons and petty crimes. At seven Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13 she was pregnant. By 15 Pat was a mother of two.

Alone at 16, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive.

Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor that offers a rare glimpse into the harrowing reality of life on America’s margins, resilience, determination, and the transformative power of love.

Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon

This is one of the little known books that only those who are searching for connections to real life find. This is not the first book you hand to a reluctant reader. It’s the second. It is told over 10 years and exclusively in letters between a young teenage girl and her boyfriend who has been sent to prison for murdering his father. It’s set in New York in the 90’s and I love it because the letters sound like real teenagers until they get older and wiser and their language changes and their perspective changes and it’s about growth and making hard decisions and it’s perfect for kids who are right at that crossroads between the right thing to do and the thing that will ruin your life beyond repair.

"Baby, the first thing I need to know from you is do you believe I killed my father?"