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I enjoyed tearjerkers a lot more when I was a kid than I do now as an adult. Or maybe my tastes in this genre have simply evolved over time?
If a book advertises itself as a tearjerker, I am generally less interested in reading it than I would have been at 8 or 10. (Perhaps this is why so many of the stories on my list are written for roughly that age group give or take a few years?)
But if a well-written story happens to have a few scenes that make me cry, I don’t mind it one bit.
Here are some tearjerkers I’ve enjoyed at various ages. As I haven’t reread most of them recently, I can’t say whether my opinion of them remains the same! Hopefully, they’re just as good as I recall, though.
1. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
2. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
3. Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan
4. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
5. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
6. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Logans, #4) by Mildred D. Taylor
7. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
10. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
11. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Whistle Stop #1) by Fannie Flagg
12. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
This last book is my one exception to the rule. I reread it last year and it was even better than it was the first time around. If you can handle something that talks about infertility, child loss, and grief in a 1920s-era but still fairytale-like format, I highly recommend it.