Pretty much every teen, YA, or high school librarian I know has eventually run into the same problem with the YA books being published and that is this: the books are getting sooooooo big! Its becoming common for YA books to be 400 pages or more, and to be installments in larger series rather than standalones. Many readers do, of course, love to immerse in a big ole book, but I fear that many, many, MANY of our teens are being left behind in this trend. As a high school librarian I do not see that the majority of my students prefer, or are even open to, choosing books that much exceed 300 pages. I see a lot of students pick a book, when its time to choose for independent reading, based almost entirely on the number of pages, rather than the theme or content. Sometimes this is because their schedules are so busy as as to not allow for time to read larger books, or it sometimes is because a larger book is intimidating and perhaps their reading endurance isn’t quite up for that yet. Regardless of the reason, its totally valid! To that end I’ve created some “readalike posters” for my students to help guide them towards great shorter books.

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How to find the short books in your collection

If you use Follett Destiny you can run a report that will let you sort by page count(ish)! Just go to “reports” and the “report builder.” Create a report that includes the book’s title, author, and “extent information.” Filter or Limit as you’d like (for instance I was only wanting to find prose fiction so I created a “copy” report rather than a “title” report so that I could then limit the results to only include books whose call # started with an “F” so that my report would not include our graphic novels, memoirs, or nonfiction.) Run the report as an excel document and then you will be able to “sort” the excel sheet by the “extent” column and can easily find the books with smaller page counts currently in your collection!

You are welcome to reuse these readalike posters if you want.

The editable template link is here

Text Only Version of Title on Posters:

Books Under 250(ish) Pages

• Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood by Varsha Bajaj
• Adrift by Paul Griffin
• Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu
• Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis
• Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
• The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds
• Bunker 10 by J.A. Henderson
• The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks
• Dear Martin by Nic Stone
• The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
• Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Skyjacked by Paul Griffin
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
• Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston
• Game Change by Joseph Monninger
• Hold Stil by Nina LaCour
• I’m Not Dying With You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal
• No Safety, In Numbers by Dayna Lorentz
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Books Under 320(ish) Pages

• Bad Call by Stephen Wallenfels
• Barely Missing Everything by Matt Mendez
• Camp Valor by Scott McEwen
• The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
• The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lillian Rivera
• A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey
• The Closest I’ve Come by Fred Aceves
• Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khoram
• Dreadnought by April Daniels
• Even if We Break by Marieke Nijkamp
• Goth by Otsuichi
• The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper
• Hard Wired by Len Vlahos
• The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
• Game Changer by Tommy Greenwald
• Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith
• Here the Whole Time by Vitor Martins
• Here to Stay by Sara Farizan
• How it All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi
• Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake
• How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao
• I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells
• I am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall
• In Deeper Waters by F. T. Lukens
• Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon
• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
• The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
• Love is a Revolution by Renee Watson
• Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee
• The Obsession by Jesse Q Sutanto
• Pride by Ibi Zoboi
• Primal Animals by Julia Lynn Rubin
• Running with Lions by Julian Winters
• Light at the Bottom of the World by London Shah
• Sadie by Courtney Summers
• Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher
• She Drives Me Crazy by Kelly Quindlen
• A Spark of White Fire by Sangu Mandanna
• Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kahn
• This is Our Story by Ashley Elston
• This is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
• This is Why We Lie by Gabriella Lepore
• Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles
• The Upside of Falling by Alex Light
• A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
• Words on Bathroom Walls by Julia Walton
• You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao