Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Spencer Hesser

Tara Sullivan can't explain why she does the things she does. She can't explain why she has to count cracks or line up grains of rice before eating them. She doesn't know why she has to confess every sin or pray every time someone swears. She knows it's weird and that no one else has to do it. Maybe she's crazy. Her parents certainly seem to think so and she can't really argue.

Things get worse and worse until a family friend finally steps in.

Published in 1998, the public was much less aware of OCD so reading this was a little weird. It's not really a novel that focuses on story. It reads more like a fictionalized diary or personal testimony. I suspect the author wrote it as an educational tool, in fact. Window into the Obsessive-Compulsive mind, or some such.

It's only about 150 pages in hardcover so it's a quick read. It's an interesting voice and it definitely conveys the helplessness of dealing with these compulsions. However, it's jarring the way the book assumes that most people are completely unaware of what OCD is.

In a post-Monk world, I think everyone has a passing familiarity with what OCD is. It leaked into our language, and we self apply it when we are being super detail oriented about something. It's lazy language and most people don't fully understand the horror of it, but at least they are aware of it as a thing that happens.

Eh. It's a decent book, but I can't think of who I would recommend it to.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak is a hard book to read. It's not tough because of vocabulary level or sentence structure. It's tough because of content. It originally turned up on my reading list as part of my exploration for my LD reading ladder. This book has absolutely nothing to do with learning disorders. It is a good book though.

Melinda Sordino has a secret and it's tearing her apart. The reason she's an outcast, the reason her grades are terrible, and the reason she skips class to hang out in an abandoned janitor's closet all come back to this secret. She doesn't even want to admit it to herself and she bites through her lips to stay silent.

Her friends can't help her because she's never told them what happened. She can't speak.

This is an excellent book for young women to read. The statistics say that 1 out of every 4 teenage girls experiences sexual abuse in some way (1 out of every 6 boys, by the way, too). Clearly it's a woefully common issue for teenage girls and it happens at a time when many girls feel alienated from adult support.

I'm not saying a good book is a substitute for adult intervention and support. But I do think that books help us process difficult ideas and events.  This is not a book I would idly recommend to just any student. Certainly it is aimed more firmly at females and the subject matter is a little alarming. However, it has a solid treatment of the issue and the kind of feelings that can result. While the end is perhaps a little more "sunny" than I think the story necessarily warrants, it also emphasizes the need for communication and action.

This is a solid novel and worthy of its awards.

Out of my Mind by Sharon Draper

One of my primary sources of book recommendations for YA fiction is the students I teach. I try to pay attention to what they are reading and when they tell me something is good, I try to read it. Sometimes it goes a step further and a student brings me in a book to read; those I really hustle to get through.

Out of my Mind was brought to me by a very enthusiastic student, Ansley. When she handed it to me in class a couple weeks ago a handful of other students spotted it and chimed in on how awesome it is. So I read it yesterday. It took me about four hours to get through so it's a very quick read, but also I got through it so quickly simply because it sucked me in.

Melody, the main character and point of view, was born with cerebral palsy. She can't communicate much and she can't do anything for herself that involves more than the use of her thumbs. Yet she is extremely intelligent and has an eidetic memory. She's trapped in a self-contained classroom with other cases of extreme disability with teachers who mostly don't even try to really reach her.

Things change in her fifth grade year with a new teacher who "gets it," new inclusion classes with regular kids, and a new para-pro who comes to assist her communication. Once the gate opens, Melody communicates better and better. However, not everything changes, she still has CP after all.

This book made me cry and it made me angry. On of the teachers pissed me right off. I don't know, as a teacher, how I would have handled the situation. I probably would not have handled it perfectly either but I know I wouldn't have been so senselessly cruel.

Ack, anyway it's a great book. I'm going to have to track down a couple copies for the school.