Weird Bildungsroman

Bildungsroman: A class of novel that depicts and explores the manner in which the protagonist develops morally and psychologically. These are examples which maybe a little different than your average coming of age novel.

Updated February 6, 2023
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Ender's game
Card, Orson Scott.
Paper Book
From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game--adapted to film in 2013 starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford--is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy's recruitment into the midst of an...
It : a novel
King, Stephen
Paper Book
Stephen King's classic #1 New York Times bestseller and the basis for the massively successful films It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two as well as inspiration for HBO Max's upcoming Welcome to Derry--about seven adults who return to their hometown to...
Percy Jackson and the lightning thief
Riordan, Rick
Paper Book
The first book in the bestselling Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Now with a new cover look! Discover the story behind the Disney+ series. HALF BOY - HALF GOD - ALL HERO. Look, I never asked to be the son of a Greek god. I was just a normal kid....
We have always lived in the castle
Jackson, Shirley
Paper Book
Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly...
A wizard of Earthsea
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paper Book
The first novel of Ursula K. Le Guin's must-read Earthsea Cycle. "The magic of Earthsea is primal; the lessons of Earthsea remain as potent, as wise, and as necessary as anyone could dream." (Neil Gaiman) Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless...
Swamplandia!
Russell, Karen
Paper Book
From the celebrated twenty-nine-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (“How I wish these were my own words, instead of the breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s . . . Run for your life. This girl is on...
A prayer for Owen Meany : [a novel]
Irving, John
Paper Book
"A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation. ... An amazingly brave piece of work ... so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world." --STEPHEN KING,...
Inkheart
Funke, Cornelia Caroline.
Paper Book
Meggie loves books. So does her father, Mo, a bookbinder, although he has never read aloud to her since her mother mysteriously disappeared. They live quietly until the night a stranger knocks at their door. He has come with a warning that forces Mo to reveal an extraordinary secret-a storytelling...
Boy's life
McCammon, Robert R.
Paper Book
Robert McCammon delivers "a tour de force of storytelling" (BookPage) in this award-winning masterpiece, a novel of Southern boyhood, growing up in the 1960s, that reaches far beyond that evocative landscape to touch readers universally. Boy's Life is a richly...
Something wicked this way comes
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
It's the week before Hallowe'en, and Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois. The siren song of the calliope entices all with promises of youth regained and dreams fulfilled . . . And as two boys trembling on the brink of manhood set out to explore...

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