My 11-year-old daughter has been in search of a romance book and I don't know where to start. She specifically wants a book about a girl crushing on a boy. This is not my area of expertise so any help with an age appropriate book would be appreciated. She's been a big fan of anything by Raina Telgemeier
by Vltrscrpn
9 Comments
**Flipped** by Wendelin Van Draanen
Ok this is not exactly what you asked for, but I recently ran across **Gender Swapped Fairy Tales** by Kerrie Franzman and Jonathan Plackett. It’s all the classics – Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel – but they’ve swapped all the genders. Not just the romantic leads, but the other characters in the stories as well. If they were male in the original, they are now female and vice versa. You can slip in a little female empowerment with her romance haha.
My only other thought is **The Princess Bride** by S Morganstern (wink wink). The movie is perhaps the greatest rom com of all time, but the book is like 100 times better. It’s fairly long, but an amazing romance in the middle. I’m like 80% sure it’s appropriate for 11 y/os, but it’s been a while since I’ve read it so you might want to double check that yourself.
Wanda Brunstetter writes a lot of Amish Romance books that are clean.
Try any of the Meg Cabot books, also Harper Collins has a bunch of young girl aimed historical era romances that are pretty decent by young authors with titles like Nicola and the viscount, Cathrine and the Pirate, Gwyneth and the Thief. Ect.
Fifteen by Beverly Cleary is set in the 50’s and is all about the ups and downs and awkwardness of first love. It’s very sweet and very innocent (ends with a single, slightly awkward kiss) and is just completely charming. This was one of my absolute favorites when I was her age (and still is! I reread it every so often).
How about Jenny Han?
The Summer I Turned Pretty
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before
Other potential options:
Everything everything by Nicola Yoon
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
*The Wish* by Gail Carson Levine is a really cute romance about an 8th grader, with a slight magic realist twist.
The Girls in Love series by Jacqueline Wilson is about exactly this
*Ella Enchanted*!!! This was my absolute favorite book at your daughter’s age; it’s middle grade (so completely age appropriate) and has *such* a swoon-worthy romance. I actually read it again recently (I’m 30), and it still gave me butterflies. It’s a great romantic relationship, and it models a very healthy form of love (unlike books like Twilight that glorify toxic relationships). The title character is also a great role model. I read this book probably 40 times as a kid.
(Incidentally, if you’ve seen the movie, it’s nothing like that at all; the characters and plot and conflict and magic mechanics are all different.)