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
King, Stephen 1947-
Paper Book
"A great book...a landmark in American literature."--Chicago Sun-Times Welcome to Derry, Maine... It's a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.... They were seven teenagers when...
The lightning thief
Riordan, Rick
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times Bestseller | Now a series on Disney+ 12-year-old Percy Jackson discovers he is the son of Poseidon in the opener to the hilarious, fast-paced adventure fantasy series for young readers ages 10 and up The paperback edition of the...
We have always lived in the castle
Jackson, Shirley 1916-1965
Paper Book
Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret, with an afterword by Jonathan Lethem. A Penguin Vitae Edition Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian....
A wizard of earthsea
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paper Book
Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea,  but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless  youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered  with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow  upon the world. This is the tale of his testing,  how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed...
Swamplandia!
Russell, Karen 1981-
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 1942-
Paper Book
In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys--best friends--are playing in a Little League baseball game in New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. Owen Meany believes he didn't hit the ball by accident. He believes he is God's instrument. What happens to...
Inkheart
Funke, Cornelia 1958-
Paper Book
From internationally acclaimed storyteller Cornelia Funke, this bestselling, magical epic is now being reissued with a brand new cover in anticipation of the long-awaited fourth book in the series. One cruel night, Meggie's father reads aloud from a book called INKHEART-- and an evil ruler escapes...
Boy's life
McCammon, Robert R.
Paper Book
Something wicked this way comes
Bradbury, Ray 1920-2012
Paper Book
Few American novels written this century have endured in th heart and mind as has this one-Ray Bradbury's incomparable masterwork of the dark fantastic. A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope...

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