Books like Julie’s Wolf Pack — picked by fans

When curating a list of whimsical book recommendations, one must surely start with the epitome of whimsy herself, Miss Anne Shirley!

With her big words, vast scope for imagination, and appreciation for nature's marvels, Anne with an E is one of my favorite fictional bosom friends. A true kindred spirit, I could visit daily without tiring of her poetical musings.

I love how Anne matures as a character while still maintaining her sense of wonder, and I love how her wonder—her whimsical ability to see a simple lake as an enchanting Lake of Shining Waters—inspires me to romance my own life and search for the wondrous cloaked in the familiar.  

To put this on a list of gay coming-of-age graphic novels feels potentially like a spoiler, but in the hopes that I’ll convince at least one other person to read this near-perfect book, I’ll take the risk!

A decade after its publication, few, if any, graphic novelists have managed to match the quality of this brilliantly written, elegantly drawn, subtly rendered, and wonderfully atmospheric book about two girls whose sexualities start to manifest during a summer vacation with their families.

Mariko and Jillian Tamaki are always brilliant, but this book remains, in my opinion, their best work.

This book features a girl named Suzi, who is convinced her friend drowned because of a jellyfish sting. She’s so affected by her friend’s death that she stops talking. I loved seeing Suzi research jellyfish through this book.

I love learning and studying and how she went about it was cool. She was determined and strong. I also appreciated how the plot moves from the present to the past and showed the truth about Suzi’s friendship in the end.

This historical novel set in 1943 features brave and curious Annabelle who lives in Wolf Hollow, Pennsylvania. She and her family befriend a man living as a hermit since WWI, and the reader sees how empathy can change a person’s perspective. While featuring issues of bullying, lying, and trust, the vivid imagery from Wolk’s words bring out the beauty in even the ugliest events. The descriptions of farmland, woods, and walks home from school, make readers feel as if a time that has passed is as real as the world outside their front door. 

This book serves double duty as both a survival guide and an entertaining read you might be grateful for when the Internet goes out.

My pal Woniya was a top contender on the reality show Alone, and she survived over 70 days near the Arctic Circle using only ten basic tools, her wits, and determination. I learned that you need to be able to go without food for long stretches of time, keep up your self care routines, and challenge all of your negative thoughts with positive possibilities in order to stay on top of your game.

As one of the only female winners of the show, Woniya is also an inspiring woman role model for all of us ladybeasts. 

Alistair MacLean’s thrillers have been a guilty reading pleasure of mine since high school, when MacLean churned out bestsellers like The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare every year. MacLean creates tough, grim heroes who do whatever they have to do to get the job done. The writing is clumsy but effective, with heavy-handed humor and world-weary cynicism. The women are barely defined. And yet...

The plot, mood, and setting of each book provide one heck of an adventure. Like the crash-landing of a passenger airliner on the Greenland ice cap in Night Without End. A nearby team of scientists rushes to save the survivors. Among whom are the murderous criminals who caused the plane crash. A thoroughly riveting tale of survival in an Arctic wilderness.

There are two things that I’ve always loved in my books: animal POV and spooky vibes.

This book has both! In so many ways, the things we face in our everyday life can feel like a horror story, or feel like monsters. For a fox, that would be things like rabies, hunters, fires, etc.

The prose was so good and so vivid, and I really worried with each different story how the little foxes were going to survive. One of my absolute favorites.

When I rode ferries in the Pacific Northwest, I was always thrilled to see a black and white orca, killer whale, breach and disappear, only to jump and splash again. Rosanne Parry’s middle grade novel takes you into their home beneath those coastal waters.

I love the research she did on orca pods and how climate change negatively impacts them. The book, from the whale’s point of view, shares with readers the interactions of whale families and differences between pods. I liked reliving my times on Puget Sound and the Inland Passage as well as learning more about orcas.

I hope this book leaves readers of all ages inspired to help wildlife and confront climate change.

This book is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are living in domes to keep them safe from the deadly radiation of the planet. The story follows: Aria is a young woman living in the safety of one of these domes, and her quest to find her mother, whom she lost contact with recently after her mother was sent out to repair damage to a pod in the outer wastelands. She knows she likely won’t survive, but she ventures out into the unknown anyway, finding help from a young man named Perry. Perry is an outsider, one of the few humans left able to survive the planet’s harsh conditions. His people are referred to as uncivilized savages.

This story has a great plot twist, and Aria finds out that the savages might not be the people who live outside the domes but within them. I love a good plot… show more.

With the topic of Roe V. Wade in the United States, the chasm between pro-life and pro-choice has grown even more, and in a novel that is solely about a great compromise between the two ideologies, Shusterman’s dystopian saga could not be more relevant. Ultimately, Shusterman seems to have great worry about societies lack of value for human life, taking the choice away from those whose lives are being debated over. 

Unwind is a classic study on the intertwining of personal choice and the value of human life. Who owns our bodies? Do we? Does someone else? Does the government? Does anyone but the individual have the right to determine the value of their life? Because of society’s proximity to abortion, this storyline seems extreme and disturbing. However, The Unwind Dystology is no more extreme and disturbing than other classic dystopian novels such as 1984 and A Brave… show more.