Books like The True Meaning of Smekday

A brainy, awkward girl is flung across dimensions to rescue her father, and the book's warmth — its faith in love as a real force against cosmic conformity — carries you as fast as its plot does.

A warm, old-fashioned summer story of four sisters and a new friend, episodic in shape and gentle in stakes.

A comic, irreverent retelling of Jesus's missing years narrated by his wisecracking best friend, promising raucous adventure and gags braided with genuine warmth toward a tragic ending.

A diary-voiced, cartoon-illustrated teen monologue that swings from laugh-out-loud jokes to sudden grief within a page — propulsive, warm, and quietly devastating.

A funny, plucky first-person voice carries a Depression-era orphan's quest across Michigan — laugh-out-loud rules-of-life asides balanced with real ache about a missing family, resolving in a warm, earned reunion.

A breezy, laugh-out-loud diary romp through the daily catastrophes of teenage life — crushes, family embarrassments, and a menace of a cat — narrated in short, dated entries.

A wry, warm comedy of a selfish bachelor and a lonely twelve-year-old accidentally becoming each other's education in growing up.