Here are 100 books that I Can Jump Puddles fans have personally recommended if you like I Can Jump Puddles. Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Goodbye, Mr. Chips

J. Shep Author Of The December Issue

From my list on strong inter-generational relationships.

Why am I passionate about this?

From books to television, one of my favorite qualities of good writing is a rich, inter-generational cast of characters, especially ones that feature significant roles for characters young and old. These stories do not span multiple generations; instead, they showcase characters of all ages interacting at one time, which makes for dynamic plots and relationships.

J.'s book list on strong inter-generational relationships

J. Shep Why J. loves this book

What’s so neat about this book is that it doesn’t just capture a light-hearted and moving glimpse into English academia; it provides glimpses into a man’s—an institution in himself—relationships with his wife, coworkers, and students.

I enjoyed the progression of time. Several generations of students interact with the aging, albeit the same, “Mr. Chips.” There’s something neat about that.

By James Hilton ,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Goodbye, Mr. Chips as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 9, 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

Mr. Hilton's classic story of an English schoolmaster.


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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

Book cover of How Green Was My Valley

Elizabeth Emma Ferry Author Of Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value, and Collectivity in Contemporary Mexico

From my list on about mining's effects on communities.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by work and the ways that it organizes the rest of life. Mining is one of those activities that brings together economics, politics, gender, class, kinship, and cosmology in especially tight proximity. I am also fascinated by Latin America, a region where mining has been important for thousands of years. These interests led me to become an anthropologist specializing in mining in Mexico and Colombia. It has been my privilege to work in this area for over twenty-five years now, making lifelong friends, learning about their lives and struggles, and sharing that knowledge with students and readers. 

Elizabeth's book list on about mining's effects on communities

Elizabeth Emma Ferry Why Elizabeth loves this book

This was one of my favorite books as a child and probably one reason I became an anthropologist of mining.

Though I wouldn’t have put it this way at the time, I found it fascinating that in a place where everything is doing the same job, especially a highly dangerous and damaging job, other aspects of culture coalesce around that job and its meanings—things like religion, kinship, gender, leisure, ecology, etcetera. I was deeply moved by the description of the vast slag heap that slowly came to tower over the town, eventually engulfing the narrator’s small house. 

By Richard Llewellyn ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked How Green Was My Valley as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 9, 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

All six episodes of the BBC adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's classic novel set in a Welsh mining community at the turn of the century. Gwilym (Stanley Baker) and Beth Morgan (Siân Phillips) work their hardest to provide for their children, but these are the years before the unions improved the miner's lot, and times are very hard indeed. However, the community in which the Morgans live is a close-knit one, and they are grateful for all the help they receive, especially from the Rev. Gruffydd (Gareth Thomas).


Book cover of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Carol Van Den Hende Author Of Dear Orchid

From my list on books to read aloud to your partner.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an author who has narrated my own audiobooks, I’ve realized that it is an art and a joy to perform books aloud. I wanted to offer this list to inspire more people to read aloud to one another. It’s one of the most bonding experiences I’ve had with my husband and children. 

Performing my Orchid audiobooks has been such a rewarding experience. I loved revisiting my characters and having one final time to enjoy my stories from beginning to end. The narration process allowed me to experience my books fresh, from a reader’s point of view. The good news is that everyone can experience this joy. Pick your favorite book and share it out loud!

Carol's book list on books to read aloud to your partner

Carol Van Den Hende Why Carol loves this book

What makes a book perfect for reading aloud? I love a cast of colorful characters, unexpected twists, and great wit. 

The classic Mark Twain novel Adventures of Tom Sawyer has all of this and more! Protagonist Tom Sawyer is wily yet tender. He tricks his fellow classmates into whitewashing his fence for him, transforms the ill-gotten proceeds into a Bible, and gets classmate Becky to fall for him. 

The action and humor are so fun to read aloud. Twain’s writing kept me turning pages and wishing for just “one more chapter” until the whole book was done. Good thing the sequel, Huckleberry Finn, was able to sate a bit of our hunger for more adventures!

By Mark Twain ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.

What is this book about?

"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is the first of Mark Twain's novels to feature one of the best-loved characters in American fiction, with a critical introduction by John Seelye in "Penguin Classics". From the famous episodes of the whitewashed fence and the ordeal in the cave to the trial of Injun Joe, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain spent his own youth. A sombre undercurrent flows through the high humour and unabashed nostalgia of the novel, however, for beneath the innocence of childhood lie the inequities of adult reality…


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Book cover of The Tao of Poison

The Tao of Poison by Isham Cook,

A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.

The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…

Book cover of Jane Eyre

Elizabeth Buchan Author Of Woodspring

From my list on pushing you to be bold and brave and to never give up.

Why am I passionate about this?

A writer is made in many ways. From an early age, I had my nose in a book and spent any free time I had going to and from the local library. ‘Here she comes,’ said the librarian a little wearily as I was insatiable. For me, reading opened the door into alternative ways of seeing and of being. During the day, I put on the school uniform and learned about maths and why tax is necessary. Back home, I plunged into every kind of adventure, from the exotic and the frightening to the quietly reassuring stories of families who stuck together. It turned me into a writer.

Elizabeth's book list on pushing you to be bold and brave and to never give up

Elizabeth Buchan Why Elizabeth loves this book

Immersed in a boarding school with my parents living on another continent, I searched for comfort and found it in Charlotte Brontë’s novel of a young orphan struggling to make her way in Victorian England.

Although considered by some to be shocking when it was published in 1847, it was a sensation and has never been out of print since. 

"Do you think," she cries to the rich Mr Rochester, the man she loves, "because I am poor, plain and little, that I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart."

Complete with Gothic frills, brooding landscapes and high drama, leavened with intelligence and psychological acuity, Jane Eyre is a love story which contains one of the great cries for equality in literature.

Who could fail to respond? I certainly did, and I remember it every time…

By Charlotte Brontë ,

Why should I read it?

47 authors picked Jane Eyre as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Little treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader.

Perhaps one of the most well-known books in the world, Jane Eyre follows the life of its eponymous orphaned protagonist. From her early life Jane is strong-willed, passionate and kind but comes up against a lot of struggles. She lives with her aunt and uncle during early childhood, where…


Book cover of Costalegre: A Novel Inspired by Peggy Guggenheim and Her Daughter, Pegeen

Jennifer Dupree Author Of What Do You Want From Me?

From my list on dicey mother-daughter relationships.

Why am I passionate about this?

I bought a bookstore when I was twenty-five, knowing nothing about business but knowing I loved books. It was the happiest I’ve ever been, professionally, and also the most broke. At some point, I came to my senses, sold my store, and got a job working in a library. I’m a library director now, and I don’t get to recommend books as much as I used to when I didn’t have to do things like think about the budget and remove dead mice from the cellar. Still, I get to work around books, and I overhear and occasionally insert myself into a fair number of book-related conversations. 

Jennifer's book list on dicey mother-daughter relationships

Jennifer Dupree Why Jennifer loves this book

I love books that are 1. Set in exotic locations, and 2. Based on true people or events (because I’m exceptionally lazy about learning history any other way), and 3. Epistolary. 

This book is set in a heavily tropical area of Mexico, and it’s the journal entries of a teenager based on Peggy Guggenheim’s daughter. This fictionalized girl has every material thing she could ever want, along with a houseful of artist guests who have arrived to escape Hitler’s tightening regime. But what remains constantly out of reach for the girl is the attention of her beautiful, mercurial mother. This book nailed that feeling of longing.

By Courtney Maum ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Costalegre as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of Glamour's Best Books of the Decade and a Best Book of Summer at AM New York, Moda Operandi, GOOP, Publishers Weekly, TIME, Southern Living, and Thrillist.

Inspired by the real-life relationship between the heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter, Pegeen, Costalegre is the tender and touching story of a privileged teenager who has everything a girl could wish for, except a mother who loves her back.

It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. Hitler is circulating a most-wanted list of artists, writers, and thinkers whose work is deemed a threat to the new regime.…


Book cover of Tear

A.G.A. Wilmot Author Of Withered

From my list on manage mental health while reading spooky.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m fascinated by the intersection of mental health and horror specifically because of how the two seem (to me) to speak to one another. Both mental health and horror are confronted best by shining a light on them, by addressing them fully, personally. Horror makes intangible things tangible, I think, for the average person; and for those of us who struggle or have struggled with our mental health, it gives us the tools to detail the experience for others, to, hopefully, elicit understanding if not empathy.

A.G.A.'s book list on manage mental health while reading spooky

A.G.A. Wilmot Why A.G.A. loves this book

This book, about a young recluse losing grip on reality, unable to discern truth from her own memory, had me hooked. I found the writing vicious and fierce, the imagery haunting, and the overall focus on memory and trauma as horrors that can both shape and betray us distressing in the very best of ways. Memory and one’s sense of self are important to my own work, and as such, this book managed to tap into some personal unease.

That it’s also so sharply written (and wonderfully f*cked-up) is the icing on an already delicious narrative cake. Recommended for those who like their horror to mess with their sense of reality—personal and not. My favorite read of 2023.

By Erica McKeen ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Tear as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2023 KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE FOR LITERARY FICTION

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022

49TH STREET EDITOR'S PICK FOR SEPTEMBER 2022

A reclamation of female rage and a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman.

Frances is quiet and reclusive, so much so that her upstairs roommates sometimes forget she exists. Isolated in the basement, and on the brink of graduating from university, Frances herself starts to question the realities of her own existence. She can't remember there being a lock on the door at the top of the basement stairs-and yet, when she turns…


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Book cover of Big Ideas... For Small Businesses: Simple, Practical Tools and Tactics to Help Your Small Business Grow

Big Ideas... For Small Businesses by John Lamerton,

Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…

Book cover of The Idiot

Aggeliki Pelekidis Author Of Unlucky Mel

From my list on experience college without going into debt.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a former graduate student who holds an MA and Ph.D in English with a Creative Writing emphasis, but also as the child of immigrants and the first in my family to go to college, I love when writers deflate the pretensions of academia. I didn’t grow up around formally educated people so I can relate to the imposter syndrome some of the characters in these books experience. I don’t know who recommended Lucky Jim to me, but that book began my infatuation with the genre of academic satires or campus novels, of which there are many others. 

Aggeliki's book list on experience college without going into debt

Aggeliki Pelekidis Why Aggeliki loves this book

Finally, a campus novel with a female protagonist who’s also an undergraduate. Batuman does a wonderful job of immersing the reader in her main character’s point of view. And what a fascinating perspective she offers–I was so enthralled with her way of thinking and the amusing things she notices about the people and places around her!

The writing constantly surprised and engaged me while taking me along on the journey of Selin’s first year of college.  

By Elif Batuman ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Idiot as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book * Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction * Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction

"Easily the funniest book I've read this year." -GQ

"Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman." -Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair

A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up…


Book cover of The Magicians

Ash Fitzsimmons Author Of Stranger Magics

From my list on whisking you between worlds.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve loved portal fantasies since childhood—after all, who has never imagined being swept away to another world, particularly one in which magic is more than mere illusion? (The trick, of course, is then finding your way back…) Since the wardrobes in my life have thus far refused to open onto snowy forests, however, I write my own stories these days.

Ash's book list on whisking you between worlds

Ash Fitzsimmons Why Ash loves this book

The Magicians is what happens when a kid who’s obsessed with a series like The Chronicles of Narnia grows up, is accepted into a magical university, and discovers along the way that the fantasy world he so loved reading about is real…but not quite what he imagined. This novel, the first in a trilogy, offers a more jaded look at some of the beloved aspects of children’s fantasy and how they might play out with young adults discovering themselves and seeking purpose.

By Lev Grossman ,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Magicians as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The New York Times bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world, now an original series on SYFY

"The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea. . . . Hogwarts was never like this."
-George R.R. Martin

"Sad, hilarious, beautiful, and essential to anyone who cares about modern fantasy."
-Joe Hill

"A very knowing and wonderful take on the wizard school genre."
-John Green

"The Magicians may just be the most subversive, gripping and enchanting fantasy novel I've read this century."
-Cory…


Book cover of The Age of Miracles

Laura Hurwitz Author Of Disappear Home

From my list on protagonists coming-of-age facing challenges.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a teenager in the late sixties, born into a conservative household, with a huge rebellious streak. Starting with Woodstock, I was obsessed with hippie culture. Communes in particular held a special fascination for me, and later, as places of potential depravity. My sister-in-law lived in a commune in Oregon in the late 60s/early 70s. Many of the details in my novel are pulled from her life, and though she is no longer alive, her adult children shared stories from their childhoods. Her oldest daughter, whom I fictionalized as Shoshanna, became the character and voice I used to recount the family’s escape and eventual safe landing. The story still feels like uncovered family history.

Laura's book list on protagonists coming-of-age facing challenges

Laura Hurwitz Why Laura loves this book

I love The Age of Miracles because I was so taken with Walker’s scientific premise, that by the “slowing” of rotation, the world would come to its inevitable end. This scientifically grounded plot point was something I found arresting; it fascinated me immediately. I also loved Walker’s eleven-year-old protagonist, Julia. Julia is genuine, believable, set in her strange but also eerily recognizable nearing-the-apocalypse world. Julia also has a rich, and I felt very authentic, inner life. Her emotions rang true, and the plot not only riveted me, it broke my heart. 

By Karen Thompson Walker ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Age of Miracles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown...'

What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on an eleven-year-old girl, grappling with emotional changes in her own life..?

One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along…


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Book cover of Sexy Selfie Nation: Standing Up for Yourself in Today's Toxic, Sexist Culture

Sexy Selfie Nation by Leora Tanenbaum,

The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.

Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…

Book cover of The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes

Rosalind Brackenbury Author Of The Lost Love Letters of Henri Fournier

From my list on set in France with themes to match.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m fascinated by these themes – love, France, mystery, women’s lives, war, and peace. My parents took me to France when I was 12 and I’ve spent years there in between and go back whenever I can. I started reading in French when sent to be an au pair in Switzerland when I was 17. My own novel, The Lost Love Letters Of Henri Fournier was absorbing to write as it contains all of the above. I found an unpublished novel of Fournier’s in a village in rural France a few years ago and decided I had to write about him and his lover, Pauline, who was a famous French actress. 

Rosalind's book list on set in France with themes to match

Rosalind Brackenbury Why Rosalind loves this book

The story of a boy growing up in France before World War 1, of friendship and love and a mysterious house to which the hero finds it hard to return, I have been mesmerized for a lifetime by this short novel, and it’s the basis for my own novel about Fournier’s life and loves.  

By Hermione Lee , Alain-Fournier , Frank Davison (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lost Domain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes at a small provincial secondary school sets in train a series of events that will have a profound effect on his life, and that of his new friend Francois Seurel. It is Seurel who recalls the impact of le grand Meaulnes, disruptive and charismatic, on his schoolmates, and the encounter that is to haunt them both. Lost, and alone, Meaulnes stumbles upon an isolated house, mysterious revels, and a beautiful
girl. When he returns to Seurel it is with the fixed determination to find the house again, and the girl with whom he has fallen…


Book cover of Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Book cover of How Green Was My Valley
Book cover of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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