Teen+Topics

Note: Some of the following books feature characters going through a specific problem or issue; others are self-help books that may be of interest to teens. The books marked with an * may contain mature subject matter and/or realistic graphic language.



=STEREOTYPES/CLIQUES= //Everything You Need to Know about Cliques// by Heather Moehn: Presents an overview of cliques and explains how to deal with them, covering their formation, their negative aspects, and their relationship to friendship; also includes a glossary, a bibliography, and a list of related organizations.

//Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence// by Rosalind Wiseman: Explains how parents can help their daughters deal with the different issues surrounding friendships, boys, gossip, and cliques as they start high school.

=
//The Courage to be Yourself: true stories by teens about cliques, conflicts, and Overcoming Peer Pressure// : edited by Al Desetta. Twenty-six real teenagers describe their experiences with peer pressure, exclusion, teasing, bullying, and other forms of disrespect because of their ethnicity, sexual orientation, weight, clothing, interests, refusal to do drugs, and other reasons... =====

//Breathing Underwater// by Alex Flinn: Sent to counseling for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin, and ordered to keep a journal, sixteen-year-old Nick recounts his relationship with Caitlin, examines his controlling behavior and anger, and describes living with his abusive father.
 * ABUSIVE DATING RELATIONSHIPS **

//Dreamland// by Sarah Dessen: After her older sister runs away, sixteen-year-old Caitlin decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant, and dangerous.

//Baby Help// by Marilyn Reynolds: Because her partner continues to abuse her, seventeen-year-old Melissa takes their young child and goes to a shelter for battered women where she begins the healing process.

//Body of Christopher Creed// by Carol Plum-Ucci: Torey Adams, a high school junior with a seemingly perfect life, struggles with doubts and questions surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the class outcast.
 * BULLIES **

//Battle of Jericho// by Sharon Draper: A high school junior and his cousin suffer the ramifications of joining what seems to be a "reputable" school club.

//The Kite Runner// by Khaled Hosseini: Amir, haunted by his betrayal of Hassan, the son of his father's servant and a childhood friend, returns to Kabul as an adult after he learns Hassan has been killed, in an attempt to redeem himself by rescuing Hassan's son from a life of slavery to a Taliban official.

//Holes// by Louis Sachar: As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself. Hoot by Carl Hiassen: Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.

//Odd Girl Speaks Out: A collection of writings in which girls discuss their own experiences of being bullied or bullying other girls.//


 * DEPRESSION/SUICIDAL FEELINGS **

Damage* by A. M. Jenkins: Seventeen-year-old football hero Austin, trying to understand the inexplicable depression that has drained his interest in life, thinks that he has found relief in a girl who seems very special. Ordinary People by Judith Guest: After spending eight months in a mental institution following a suicide attempt, seventeen-year-old Conrad returns home and finds that he must rebuild his life.

//The Beast// by Walter Dean Myers: A teenager from Harlem struggles to save his girlfriend from herself when she develops a drug problem while he is away at a Connecticut prep school.
 * DRUG ABUSE **

//Go Ask Alice//: Based on the diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user chronicling her struggle to escape the pull of the drug world.

//Kissing Doorknobs// by Terry Spencer Hesser: Fourteen-year-old Tara describes how her increasingly strange compulsions begin to take over her life and affect her relationships with her family and friends.
 * OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER **

//Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood//: Jennnifer Traig. The author discusses her troubled and somewhat bizarre childhood, her undiagnosed struggles with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and her introduction to a set of religious rules she hadn't know existed before.

//Stick Figure// by Lori Gottlieb: The author shares her childhood diaries, chronicling her experiences as an eleven-year-old anorexic.
 * EATING DISORDERS **

//Best Little Girl in the World// by Stephen Levenkron: After being a model daughter all her life, fifteen-year-old Francesca suddenly begins to starve herself and is diagnosed as suffering from a psychological disorder known as anorexia nervosa.


 * AUTISM/DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES **

//The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time// by Mark Haddon: Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

//Riding the Bus with My Sister// by Rachel Simon: When she received an invitation to her mentally retarded sister's annual Plan of Care review, Simon realized that this was Beth's way of attempting to bring her back into her life. Beth challenged the author to give a year of her life to riding "her" buses with her. Even though Simon didn't know where it would take her, she accepted. During that time, she came to see her sister as a person in her own right with strong feelings about how she wanted to live her life, despite what others thought.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Coping When a Brother or Sister is Autistic// by Marsha Sarah Rosenberg: Explains how to cope when a sibling is autistic, explaining what autism is and discussing its diagnosis, treatments, related disorders, and long term effects; also includes a glossary, a bibliography, and a list of related organizations.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//A Time for Dancing// by Davida Hurwin Seventeen-year-old best friends Samantha and Juliana tell their stories in alternating chapters after Juliana is diagnosed with cancer.
 * DEATH OF A FRIEND **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Pedro and Me// by Judd Winick: In graphic art format, describes the friendship between two roommates on the MTV show "Real World," one of whom died of AIDS.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">DRINKING/BINGE DRINKING/DRINKING AND DRIVING **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Tears of a Tiger// by Sharon Draper: The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others in the school.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Korin Zailickas//: The author discusses her relationship with alcohol, telling how she began drinking at the age of fourteen and continued drinking for the express purpose of getting drunk, bolstering her courage, or medicating her moods, and sharing the reasons why she decided to give up alcohol nine years later.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//We All Fall Down// by Robert Cormier: As The Avenger searches for the teenage boys who trashed a house in his neighborhood, Buddy, one of the trashers, increases his drinking in order to cope with his parents' separation and his obsession with the daughter of the owner of the vandalized house.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Do I Look Fat in This?: Life Doesn't Begin Five Pounds from Now//: Provides a step-by-step plan for breaing self-destructive cycles and creating a healthy self-image, and offers strategies on how to overcome relationship issues and build self-esteem.
 * OVERWEIGHT/POOR BODY IMAGE **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Life in the Fat Lane// by Cherie Bennett: Sixteen-year-old Lara, winner of beauty pageants and Homecoming Queen, is distressed and bewildered when she starts gaining weight and becomes overweight.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Leaving Fishers// by Margaret Peterson Haddix: After joining her new friends in the religious group called Fishers of Men, Dorry finds herself immersed in a cult from which she must struggle to extricate herself.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Fat Kid Rules the World// by Kelly Going: Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly three hundred pounds, gets a new perspective on life when Curt, a semi-homeless teen who is a genius on guitar, asks Troy to be the drummer in a rock band.

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