I have always adored stories that revolve around friendship. It just gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside to watch characters become friends and how that friendship grows and changes over time. To help you write a story that represents friendship, I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite young adult novels that do a fantastic job of embodying that theme (and a few children’s titles as well).
Here are ten YA and children’s books that celebrate friendship.
1) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Orphan Harry Potter has lived his whole life in a broom closet for a bedroom with his grisly aunt and uncle on Privet Drive. But then letters start dropping on the doormat from Hogwarts which his aunt and uncle quickly confiscate. Then on Harry Potter’s eleventh birthday, a giant of a man named Hagrid shows up to tell Harry that he is a wizard and has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Being one of the most successful children’s series of all time, the Harry Potter books have come up more than once before on the blog. Though the series includes a unique magic system and fantastic worldbuilding, one of its most impressive aspects is the characters and the friendships that develop between them. The first book is enjoyable enough at first, but it is only when Harry links up with his friends Ron and Hermione that the story truly comes alive.
2) The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
It starts with a pair of pants—a pair of pants that miraculously fits all four friends Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen, despite their differing body types. As they head off on their own respective summer adventures, they agree to mail the pants back and forth between one another. Doing so helps to keep the friends close together, even as they encounter new romances and other experiences many miles apart.
I first read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as a teenager and was touched by the close friendships between the four main characters. Each storyline is equally engaging and the characters are well-developed. The support these girls show for one another is very moving and will make you nostalgic for your own adolescent friendships.
3) Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
When the pig Wilbur is born the runt of his litter, a young girl named Fern saves his life, earning his eternal love and gratitude. On the farm, he befriends a spider named Charlotte who lives in the rafters above his pen. When Wilbur’s life is threatened once again, Charlotte enlists the help of the rat Templeton and begins to weave words into her web like “Some Pig” and “Radiant”.
It may not seem like the friendship between a pig and a spider could be so profound, but reading this book (or watching the animated 1973 film featuring Debbie Reynolds and her beautiful voice) still reduces me to tears every time. The love Charlotte shows for Wilbur in weaving such lovely words into her web should help to inspire the strength of the friendships in your own story.
4) Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
In Ketterdam, a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be bought for the right price, criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker is offered a chance at a dangerous heist that would make him rich beyond his wildest imaginings. But he can’t do it alone. He gathers six outcasts—a convict bent on revenge, a sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a bet, a runaway with a privileged past, a spy known as Wraith, a Heartrender who uses her magic to survive the slums, and a thief with a gift for unlikely escapes. Kaz’s crew is the one thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they manage not to kill each other first.
This book takes place in Bardugo’s mega-popular Grishaverse, which includes the Shadow and Bone trilogy (now a series on Netflix). Six of Crows features a fantastic crew of characters where each member is fascinating and unique and yet they fit together perfectly as one unit. They are deeply flawed and not above doing awful things in the name of survival, but Bardugo makes them so sympathetic that you can’t help but fall in love with them and deeply enjoy their friendships with one another.
5) The Body by Stephen King
It’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, and a boy named Ray Brower from a nearby town has disappeared. Twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio set off on a quest to find his body along the railroad track. On the course of their journey, they must come to terms with death and the reality of growing up in a small factory town where their options for the future are limited.
Most people know this novella best as the basis for the wonderful 1986 film, Stand by Me. I first read it as a part of Stephen King’s Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas. The Body is now available as a standalone book, which I highly recommend picking up if you are a child or young adult since the other novellas in Different Seasons were definitely not written with a young audience in mind. Reading The Body and/or watching Stand by Me will inspire you to construct strong friendships between your characters, and have them grapple with intense themes.
6) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Observant, sensitive Charlie enters his first year of high school and charts his way from adolescence to adulthood. He doesn’t know how to make friends at first but is drawn into the world of Patrick, an odd but charismatic upperclassman, and his beautiful stepsister, Sam. Charlie navigates first dates, family drama, and drugs. He is often caught between trying to live his life and trying to run away from it.
Though I didn’t read this one for the first time until I was in my twenties, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of my favorite YA books. It includes some of the most well-developed characters I’ve ever come across—particularly shy, heartbreaking Charlie. His friendships with Patrick and Sam teach him a lot about what it means to love someone and to have them support you when you need them most.
7) Looking for Alaska by John Green
Miles Halter is bored with his safe life at home and chooses to attend boarding school at Culver Creek. There he makes his first friends, including the mysterious and endlessly fascinating Alaska Young. Then tragedy strikes, and Miles and his friends are never the same.
You can learn a lot from this book about how to portray friendship and loyalty. It also shows that in a friendship you inevitably end up failing each other—sometimes catastrophically. Looking for Alaska will have you asking yourself questions about how real a friendship can be if one friend doesn’t accept the other for who they are. There is also a lot of great banter to study here.
8) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Each year, Blue Sargent and her mother go to watch the soon-to-be-dead walk by. Blue never sees them but this year, a boy emerges from the dark to speak to her. His name is Gansey and he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue makes a point of staying away from Aglionby boys, known as Raven Boys, but is drawn to Gansey for reasons she can’t quite explain. Three other Raven Boys have joined his strange quest—Adam, a poor scholarship student; Ronan, a fiercely emotional soul; and Noah, the shy watcher who observes a great deal but speaks very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned by her psychic family that she will cause her true love to die. She never believed in true love but as she falls deeper into the world of these Raven Boys, she’s not so sure.
As I’ve mentioned before on the blog, Maggie Stiefvater is one of my favorite authors, and I think she hit it out of the park with this novel. As intriguing as this book’s form of fantasy is, it wouldn’t work at all if the story weren’t carried by some truly wonderful characters. As a reader, you follow Blue as she makes friends with the Raven Boys, and wish that you could be a part of this ragtag gang too. This is another one where the banter is top-notch.
9) Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Jess Aarons has been training all summer so that he can be the fastest runner in the fifth grade, which he almost is, until the new girl Leslie Burke outpaces him. They quickly become friends and spend most days in the woods behind Leslie’s house, where they invent an enchanted land called Terabithia. One day, Leslie goes to Terabithia without Jess, and tragedy strikes. Jess must depend on the love of his family and the strength Leslie has given him to deal with his grief.
I mentioned in my low fantasy guide that I read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt and this book in the same month and remember it as my “month of crying”. This is a heartwrenching read, so have your tissues ready. But don’t let the sad nature of the book scare you away—the friendship between Jess and Leslie is so wonderfully developed and will take you back to making up imaginary worlds with your friends as a kid.
10) Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
Frances has always been a study machine geared toward one goal: elite university. She won’t let friends, a guilty secret, or the person she is on the inside get in her way. But then she meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favorite podcast, who unlocks her true self. After that, the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken. Suffocating with guilt, Frances’s dreams come crashing down. She knows she must confront her past and confess why Carys disappeared. Meanwhile, Aled is alone fighting even darker secrets. Frances is going to need all the courage she has to face up to her fears and overcome them.
This is such a great contemporary read. Radio Silence has one of the best boy-girl friendships I’ve ever read—it feels as though Frances and Aled were just meant to be best pals. Watching this friendship bloom will give you all those great fuzzy feelings. This book also happens to have the same name as the winning story of our July 2022 Worldbuilding Short Fiction Contest. Check it out here and read an interview with the author here.
Soak Yourself in Fiction
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