After the Moment
Leigh Hunter, 17, moves from New York to Washington, DC, to help his stepsister Millie cope with the death of her father. Maia Morland, a recovering anorexic and self-mutilator, eats her meals with the Hunters as part of her recovery. At first Leigh wants only to keep her safe but finds himself falling in love. He eats so that she will eat. She's raped (and filmed) by three prep-school classmates on his one night away from DC. In the background, bombs drop on Baghdad, and Leigh discovers that nations, like preppies, can justify anything. The author's feel for character and voice has never been better, and Leigh narrates with deep intelligence and heightened feeling. He's a complex and fully fleshed out protagonist. Millie is an especially vivid supporting character—precocious and hyper-verbal, wide-eyed yet cosmopolitan. Maia, however, around whom so much of the narrative revolves, sometimes seems too lightly drawn. She's clearly tortured and is ultimately unreachable. The author's prose is at once spare and sophisticated, and the resulting mood gentle and furious by turns.
Submitted on Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 16:08 — Gabrielle
Author: Garret Freymann-WeyrPublisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (2009)Binding: Hardcover, 336 pages
Angels Fall From Gasoline Rainbows: A Novel
With all odds against him, sixteen-year old Simon struggles with the loss of his alcoholic mother, which leaves him fending for himself. Later that day he finds out that his best friend is a victim of sexual abuse and witnesses this horrible act when visiting her home. Simon finds himself an orphan who turns to self-mutilation, violently lashing out against the evils of the world. This novel is based on one boy's true-life tragedies and has given him the passion to be the voice for the forgotten children of the world.
Submitted on Saturday, April 4, 2009 - 15:27 — Gabrielle
Author: C. J. MadsenPublisher: iUniverse, Inc. (2004)Binding: Paperback, 200 pages
Bait
Diego MacMann is in trouble. At 16, he faces juvenile court, charged with assault. He just can't control his fists, especially when he feels that his masculinity is threatened. Anger-management classes have failed, and now this earnest young man teeters between self-loathing and defensive pride. Hope comes unexpectedly when he establishes a bond with Mr. Vidas. The probation officer asks questions that challenge Diego to examine his motivations and his emotional life. How does he feel about his absent birth father? The stepfather who committed suicide? The gay student who looked at him that way just before Diego punched him out? The third-person narrative keeps readers one step ahead of Diego as he unravels the effects of abandonment, poverty, and sexual abuse on himself and his struggling family. During the short sessions with Mr. Vidas, he finds some of the tools and insights he needs to navigate his rocky passage to maturity. Unlike most recent fiction that addresses sexual abuse, this story focuses not on the telling of secrets, but on making sense of the experience and building a healthy foundation for moving forward.
Submitted on Friday, February 19, 2010 - 01:26 — Gabrielle
Author: Alex SanchezPublisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing (2009)Binding: Hardcover, 256 pages
Ballads of Suburbia
Kara hasn't been back to Oak Park since the end of junior year, when a heroin overdose nearly killed her and sirens heralded her exit. Four years later, she returns to face the music. Her life changed forever back in high school: her family disintegrated, she ran around with a whole new crowd of friends, she partied a little too hard, and she fell in love with gorgeous bad-boy Adrian, who left her to die that day in Scoville Park....
Amid the music, the booze, the drugs, and the drama, her friends filled a notebook with heartbreakingly honest confessions of the moments that defined and shattered their young lives. Now, finally, Kara is ready to write her own.
Submitted on Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 12:42 — Gabrielle
Blade Silver: Color Me Scarred (Truecolors)
Ruth Wallace knows she can hide the scars on her arms for only so long. Who wears long sleeves all summer? Cutting herself doesn't make Ruth's problems disappear, but at least it helps her cope - or so she thinks. Her dad is a nightmare, her mother is lost in a medicated dreamland, and her brother can't handle their family life any more than she can.
This is just my way of dealing with the pain.
Ruth's new crush, Glen Collins, and her good friend Abby are starting to get suspicious. Hopefully they can help Ruth heal her scars - the ones she hides and the one's she can't - before something terrible happens.
Submitted on Saturday, April 4, 2009 - 15:27 — Gabrielle
Author: Melody CarlsonPublisher: NavPress (2005)Binding: Paperback, 208 pages
Break
Seventeen-year-old Jonah is on a quest to break every bone in his body, and his best friend Naomi is there to film each attempt, as he crashes his skateboard or dives into an empty pool. His 16-year-old brother, Jesse, has deadly food allergies and their parents aren't vigilant about keeping the house safe, so that job has fallen to Jonah, who is weighed down by the responsibility. He breaks his bones so that as he heals he becomes stronger ("It's sort of a natural bionics thing. Break a leg, grow a better leg. Break a body, grow a better body"), a belief treated with almost religious reverence from some, like Naomi (who calls it a "revolution"), but that eventually results in his being institutionalized. Moskowitz, who wrote the story while a high school junior, paces the story well and creates in Jonah a believable and complex protagonist. Love interest Charlotte is one-dimensional, and Naomi strains credulity as she eggs Jonah on. But the brothers' relationship is poignant, and Moskowitz's depiction of Jonah and Jesse's respective traumas-and a family drowning in dysfunction-are viscerally real.
Submitted on Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 15:11 — Gabrielle
Contusion: Poems of Pain and Longing
In this, her first collection of poems, Quinn Collard turns to her own often fragile mental state, covering depression, self-injury, and obsession.
Submitted on Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 15:19 — Gabrielle
Cut
When she arrives at Sea Pines Callie is self-destructive unresponsive and withdrawn. Her parents and doctor have placed her in the "residential treatment facility" after discovering that she cuts herself. Callie refuses to talk to anyone including her psychiatrist. But slowly through compelling first-person narrative the event that traumatized her comes to light. Callie reveals that her brother Ben nearly died from liver failure while in her care. Her mother was unavailable and her father was at a bar. Although their absence is evidence of a deep family dysfunction Callie blames herself for the crisis. When the threat of expulsion from Sea Pines precipitates a cutting incident that frightens her Callie finally begins her healing process. She opens up to the girls around her and surrenders to her therapist the compass she's been using to cut herself. Through Callie's frank and realistic voice first-time novelist Patty McCormick illuminates a subject that is rarely discussed. Her story of Callie's recovery will speak to the more than 1 million people - mainly girls and young women - who engage in acts of self-inflicted violence every year.
Submitted on Saturday, April 4, 2009 - 15:27 — Gabrielle
Cutting Out the Pain: A Poetic Guide to Teen Depression
Cutting Out the Pain: A Guide to Teen Depression is a collection of poetry based on the author’s own bout with the disease as well as self-mutilation. The purpose of the publication is to educate people about the disorder and relate to those who already have it. It is a blend of sadness, hope, depression and reason. Through these firsthand words, the reader will see what it is like to feel pleasure through pain, relief through blood. Thousands of teens all over the world suffer from this disorder. Now you can read why and how.
Submitted on Saturday, April 4, 2009 - 15:27 — Gabrielle
Author: Ashley Renee LynchPublisher: PublishAmerica (2007)Binding: Paperback, 55 pages
