Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2025 Read Harder Challenge
Newsletter 1

44+ Of Your Favorite Books About Siblings

Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

This post is sponsored by Still a Work in Progress by Jo Knowles

still a work in progressIn a return to middle-grade fiction, master of perspectives Jo Knowles depicts a younger sibling struggling to maintain his everyday life when his older sister is in crisis.

Noah is just trying to make it through seventh grade. The girls are confusing, the homework is boring, and even his friends are starting to bug him. Not to mention that his older sister, Emma, has been acting pretty strange, even though Noah thought she’d been doing better ever since the Thing They Don’t Talk About. The only place he really feels at peace is in art class, with a block of clay in his hands. As it becomes clear through Emma’s ever-stricter food rules and regulations that she’s not really doing better at all, the normal seventh-grade year Noah was hoping for begins to seem pretty unattainable. In an affecting and realistic novel with bright spots of humor, Jo Knowles captures the complexities of navigating middle school while feeling helpless in the face of a family crisis.

____________________

Siblings: love ’em or hate ’em, if you’ve got ’em, then you’ve probably got a story or two.

We asked for your favorite books about siblings, and you answered. Here are more than 44 great books about siblings.

 

Among Others by Jo Walton

Beezus & Ramona by Beverly Cleary

The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren

Cassandra at The Wedding by Dorothy Baker

Caucasia by Danzy Senna

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Elemental Series (Storm, Spark, Spirit, Secret & Sacrifice) by Brigid Kemmerer

Fearie Tale by Raymond Feist

First Light by Charles Baxter

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

“Gaither Sisters” books (starting with One Crazy Summer) by Rita Williams-Garcia

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

King Lear by William Shakespeare

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

M for Mischief by Robert Parker

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Montana Sky by Nora Roberts

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Ed Tarkington

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos

Sister Salty, Sister Sweet: A Memoir of Sibling Rivalry by Shannon Kring Biro and Natalie Kring

Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner

Super Fudge by Judy Blume

Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas Sparks

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle