97 Books Like Meet the Austins

Anne Shirley is a perfectly imperfect heroine, and that’s why I love her. She’s creative and imaginative and gets so lost in her daydreams that she can forget the flour in a cake or to cover leftover pudding, leaving easy access for a peckish mouse. Her temper matches her red hair, and she refuses to let anyone insult her dignity. She dreams of meeting kindred spirits—those individuals you just click with.

Although I first discovered Anne as a teen, I’ve returned to her throughout my life, and at each stage, she’s there like an old friend. The best part of knowing Anne has been meeting kindred spirits from all around the globe who share their own stories of reading and loving Anne.  

Bea is a kid with big feelings who’s navigating major changes. After her parents’ divorce, she finds stability in a list of constants: that each of her parents will always love her; that she’ll always have a home with each of them; that they are still a family.

I felt Bea’s waves of elation and anger so intensely that some moments made me feel like my heart might burst. Ultimately, the love and support she receives from the adults in her life helped me remember my own things that will not change.

Attending a private school on scholarship among wealthy classmates, Merci Suárez never feels like she belongs. Her family has always been close, with three generations living in houses nestled next to one another, but lately, things aren’t easy at home, either. Merci’s grandfather is acting in ways she doesn’t understand, and she knows the others are hiding something from her.

I love Merci’s spirited, spunky personality and loving family. She navigates conflicts with courage, pluck, and honesty. The way she faces challenges gives me the confidence to take mine on.

This is probably my favorite book of all time! It is a roller coaster of highs that make me so happy and then lows that break my heart. It’s definitely a “just one more chapter” story—I just had to see what would happen to Edward next. I wanted to jump into there to give that Rabbit a hug, take him home with me. Edward changes so much throughout his heart-warming journey.

It is my go-to book for kids ready for chapter books because it pulls them in and doesn’t let go. Edward is lost from the little girl who loves him for most of the book, but then, that miraculous ending… it doesn’t matter how many times I read it, I cry. Every. Single. Time.

One of Dr. Greene’s basic beliefs, reiterated often in this wise and compassionate book, is that “Kids do well if they can.” Instead of seeing their child as manipulative, attention-seeking, stubborn, controlling, or defiant, readers learn to understand that really, the child lacks some necessary skills: flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, emotion regulation, and problem-solving. Using a combination of exposition, explanation, and stories from his decades of practice with troubled kids in many circumstances, Greene shows parents how to put the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model into action. He reassures readers that—even if they’ve been doing it all wrong until now—there’s always room for growth and change, starting now. “Kids are resilient,” he writes. “They come around if we start doing the right thing.”

This novel intrigued me because of Robin, a young boy who cares deeply about endangered animals. Powers uses the child as a device to make readers think about our earth and its inhabitants. I did the same with the character in my novel. Both children agonize over how to make adults pay attention to the crisis we face.

While the plot centers on a father’s intense devotion to his struggling son, Powers succeeds in portraying nature’s magnificence and its increasing fragility. I am in awe of his ability to create such a page-turning plot in a message-driven book.

The stories are twisted and disturbing, and the artwork is just as awesome. This is the sort of book to give a kid (or even an adult) who says they don’t like reading. The books they beat you over the head with at school are boring enough to turn anyone into a non-reader; this little gem may just be the antidote to this situation.

I love this book because it’s unique in the parenting book sphere. It’s largely focused on kids with neurodiversity. I finished the book feeling like I had a new understanding of how to support neurodiverse children, how to help them regulate their emotions, and how to build emotional intelligence in ways that work for their unique nervous system and brain.

Plenty of sociologists have gone into schools and tried to work out what kids think, but few have written about the experience as clearly, directly, and thoughtfully as Corrigan.

Corrigan did research with teenage working-class boys who attended two different schools in Sunderland in the early 1970s. He found, in short, that these boys did not like school; they especially did not like the fact that they were forced to go. This made Corrigan question why we make young people attend institutions that they hate, and which they do not benefit from.

Despite recent ‘progressive’ reforms in education, nothing had changed: ‘they didn’t like [school] when it was all maths and exams; they now didn’t seem to like it when it was all civics and projects’.

I’ve been a huge fan of Ross Greene’s work for a long time because he is changing the way parents and educators look at children with behavioral challenges. His powerful motto, “Kids do well when they can” is a call for teaching lagging executive skills, instead of punishing kids for having executive functioning challenges. Instead of thinking of a child with ADHD as being a “behavior problem” or “unmotivated”, Dr. Greene's Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach helps parents and educators focus on the true factors contributing to challenging behaviors, empowering educators to address these factors and create helping relationships with their most at-risk kids.