schizophrenia

Review: Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin

| Tasha

Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin

Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin (9780062665867)

Della knows what it looks like when her mother gets worse, like when she had to be hospitalized four years ago and Della didn’t see her for months. So when she finds her mother digging every seed out of a watermelon to keep Della and her baby sister safe, Della knows that it’s up to her to help. She tries getting some healing honey from the magical Bee Lady, but the Bee Lady tells her that the fix may be more about Della than her mother’s brain. So Della decides to become the model daughter to give her mother’s brain a rest. That’s hard on their working produce farm where a drought is damaging the crops. Soon Della is struggling with the oppressive heat of the summer, trying to keep her baby sister under control, harvesting produce, manning the farm stall, and helping her mother too. When it all becomes too much, Della decides she has to leave to help her mother, which puts her on the path to realizing that she has to accept her mother and empathize before she can help at all.

This is Baldwin’s debut novel and it’s a great summer read. She has created quite a pressure cooker of a summer for Della where everything seems to be in crisis or falling apart and everything is entirely out of Della’s control. The high heat adds steam, the troublesome but lovable little sister adds humor but problems, and the drought adds financial pressures for the whole family to muddle through. Della throughout is clearly a child who takes responsibility for things, worries a lot and is trying to learn. She is entirely human, making mistakes along the way.

The focus of the book is on Della’s mother and her struggles with schizophrenia. Her refusal to take her medication any longer precipitates her more symptoms worsening. As her father tries to convince her mother to make different choices, Della gets angry with her father for his unwillingness to force her mother to do something. Her father demonstrates exactly what Della needs to learn, empathy and compassion for her mother and allowing her the space to make her own decisions about her life. This perspective is often lost in novels for young people about mental illness and it’s a pleasure to see it so clearly shown here.

A great book about mental health in families, this is a great pick for summer reading. Appropriate for ages 9-12.

(Reviewed from copy provided by HarperCollins.)

The Place Between Breaths by An Na

| Tasha

The Place Between Breaths by An Na

The Place Between Breaths by An Na (9781481422253)

Grace lives a quiet life at home with her father as he searches out the best scientists in the world to find the gene that controls schizophrenia, the mental illness that stole Grace’s mother from them. In a series of flashbacks, Grace’s life is laid out. From her work as an intern at her father’s workplace to her connection with a young researcher to her best friend’s struggle with an unexpected pregnancy. Grace is systematic and has routines that govern her life. She is definitely not her mother. But as her life starts to twist and change, Grace must face the truth about what is happening.

This book is nearly impossible to talk about without spoilers and a large part of what makes this book so successful is the journey of realization that the reader takes along with Grace. The book is multilayered and complex, each chapter taking place in a season, but the seasons are not necessarily in the same years at all. There are flashbacks, chapters that are surreal, others that are frighteningly strange and still others that offer sudden clarity about what is happening. It is a book designed to confuse and reveal, a dance of dizziness that is all-encompassing.

It is the writing here that shines, moments on the page become incredibly meaningful and it’s a book that will have readers turning back to previous chapters to read them in the light of what was just discovered. It’s a puzzle of a book, a deep look at the chaos of mental illness and a profound experience to read.

Masterfully written, this is a harrowing depiction of mental illness in a family. Appropriate for ages 14-18.

Reviewed from copy provided by Atheneum.

Review: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

| Tasha

challenger deep

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (InfoSoup)

The Captain is always watching, constantly there, even before the ship. Caden knows the Captain well and knows enough to both respect and fear him. As he spends more time on the ship, he also gets close to the parrot who is working to plot against the Captain and bring Caden onto his side. But at times the ship fades away and reality comes back to Caden. He realizes that he’s pushing friends away and becoming more and more alone in his life. He’s always been popular and had plenty of friends but his new oddness and the strange way his mind is working keeps them at a distance. As the ship approaches the deepest part of the ocean, others join the crew, teens who have their own roles on the ship, those who navigate and those who look into the future. As Caden begins to get the treatment he needs for the voices in his head, these are revealed as the other patients around him. Caden has to journey across the dark sea alone, figure out who is on his side, and hopefully come out the other side alive. It’s a journey through a mind that is fighting an internal chemical battle against itself but it is also a journey of brilliance and beauty.

Shusterman writes from experience about the impact a mentally-ill teen can have on a family. His own son battles mental illness and the illustrations throughout the novel are ones that his son did as he got treatment. The book is raw and stunning in its depiction of the vivid world that schizophrenia can create, the voices making sense in this alternate reality of captains, parrots, ships and crewmen. There are moments of breathtaking clarity, where the deception is swept clear and the reader sees what had been clouded before. It is in these moments that the power of mental illness is striking and blazing bright. And then the clouds descend again and the fiction takes over the brain.

Shusterman writes a brave story here, one that doesn’t try to explain the fictions of the mind, but instead allows readers to ride the waves of paranoia and delusion along with Caden. Caden himself is a character that is so caught up in the throes of mental illness that one realizes that the battle all along has been for himself and his own survival. Shusterman plays with perspective, changing the narration from first person to second person and back again. It’s disarming and wild, something that readers may not notice at first, except as a strange jarring that slowly builds. It’s a very smart use of perspective, creating its own jittery feel for the reader.

A journey through mental illness, this book for teens speaks to the hope that treatment brings but also the hard work that it takes to leave the world of the mind behind and enter reality again. Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from digital galley received from Edelweiss and HarperCollins.

A Blue So Dark

| Tasha

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler

Aura has a secret that is getting harder and harder to keep.  Her mother is suffering from schizophrenia and has become Aura’s sole responsibility now that her father has remarried and started a new family.  Aura must make sure her mother goes to job as an art teacher and tries to monitor her through the window.  But her mother is slipping further and further away, into her own world of delusions, fear and suspicion.  As if that isn’t complicated enough, Aura has other personal issues.  Her best friend just had a baby and can’t be as supportive as she once was.  She has fallen for a skateboarding boy but can’t seem to put two words together around him.  To top it all off, she has started to work for her grandmother, who doesn’t know who Aura is.  As Aura tries to save and protect everyone around her, who is saving her?

This book is an honest and brutal portrayal of mental illness and the toll it takes upon the caregiver, in this case a teen who just wants to be normal.  A large piece of the tension here is the relationship between mother and daughter, which teeters, tips and overturns.  There is such a sense of betrayal and loss in their relationship, powerfully combined with dread and fear.  Aura sees herself in her mother’s illness, certain that she too will eventually succumb to schizophrenia.  She believes it is tied to the artistic talent that both she and her mother have, so she tries to turn her back on art.

Aura is a well-drawn protagonist trying to cope with an impossible situation and fighting to keep up the pretense that nothing is wrong.  She is by turns in denial about the situation and drowning in it.  She is a strong, amazing character who is resilient and refuses to stop fighting for her mother and herself. 

Highly recommended, this book is dark, deep and haunting.  It speaks from the heart about matters that are too often hidden or whispered about.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from copy received from Flux.

Holly Schindler has done several blog interviews: Cynsations, Bildungsroman and Bart’s Bookshelf.