Social Issues: Disease / Illness

TITLE & AUTHOR

Lefty Carmichael Has A Fit

When Lefty Carmichael learns he has epilepsy, he believes he can handle the possibility of unexpected seizures. But can his family, his friends and his girlfriend?

Midget*

A physically handicapped boy, who has suffered years of abuse at the hands of his older brother, discovers that he has amazing but terrifying mental powers.

Needles: A Memoir Of Growing Up With Diabetes

DOMINICK, A

Dominick tells her story about how she and her sister grew up with diabetes, and the emotional and physical challenges she faced after her sister’s tragic death.

Night Kites

Pedro And Me

A heartfelt memoir about the author's friendship with AIDS educator Pedro Zamora, who died of the disease after appearing on MTV's Real World.

Petey

Petey, born with cerebral palsy, and misdiagnosed as retarded, has spent sixty years in institutions. When Trevor Ladd rescues him from a group of snow throwing bullies, Petey is compelled to overcome his physical difficulties to become Trevor's friend.

Ryan White: My Own Story

The heartwarming story of Ryan White's life with AIDS and his courageous fight against it.

Stuck In Neutral*

Cerebral Palsy traps Shawn McDaniel in a world where he can't speak or control his movement. No one knows that he is more than he seems - that he thinks, reads and understands that his dad wants him dead.

Summer To Die

Meg poignantly relates the story of her older sister's death from leukemia in this moving and perceptive novel.

Switch*

Till Death Do Us Part*

Diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, 18-year-old April faces an uncertain future with her fiancée. Mark, a race car driver with cystic fibrosis, suffers a terrible accident and this forces April to make a difficult decision

Juliana is dark and serious, close to her family and recently dumped by her beloved boyfriend Jack; Samantha is blonde and outrageous, playing the romantic field and angered by her own family's dissolution. It's the summer before their senior year, and the two girls, longtime best friends, take turns narrating the events that unfold when Julie discovers that she has cancer.

Social Issues: Disease / Mental Illness

TITLE & AUTHOR

Bell Jar

Autobiographical novel about a young woman on the brink of madness and suicide.

Brothers*

When his idolized older brother leaves college for a mental health facility and then disappears, 17-year-old Chris follows him to the compound of an anti-government militia group and tries to rescue him.

Crazy Horse Electric Game

Willie, a baseball hero who is brain-damaged in an accident, runs away from home when his family and friends shun him.

Cut*

While confined to a mental hospital, Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons for her self-mutilation and gradually gets better.

Girl Interrupted

Committed to a psychiatric ward at age 18, the author spent two years on the ward for teenage girls. A contemporary classic of self-discovery, this memoir tells of her journey through a "parallel universe" of madness.

Harley, Like A Person

Harley, an artistic teenager living with his alcoholic father and angry mother, suspects that she's adopted and begins a search to find her long lost father, and hope.

Humming Whispers*

In a poignant first-person narration, Sophy expresses her fear that at 14, the same age her sister began to hear voices, she too will become schizophrenic.

Kissing Doorknobs*

Tara is bright and funny, but is also troubled with quirky behaviors she knows are irrational, but can't control - like kissing doorknobs. A funny and compelling story about obsessive-compulsive behavior, and how it affects relationships.

Language Of Goldfish

Carrie Stokes, a sensitive artist and talented mathematician who is suffering a mental breakdown. As Carrie retreats little by little into her head, a kaleidoscope of shifting emotions come tumbling out.

Lisa, Bright And Dark*

Three teenage friends help Lisa to cope with the mental illness her parents and teachers refuse to acknowledge.

My Louisiana Sky

Tiger Ann Parker desperately wants to escape from her rural town of Saitter, Louisiana - and the struggles of living with a mentally disabled mother, a "slow" father, and classmates who taunt her. But before she leaves to spend the summer with her aunt in Baton Rouge, the sudden revelation of a dark family secret prompts Tiger to make a decision that will ultimately change her life.

My Sister From The Black Lagoon

Lorna comes of age in the shadows of a family torn apart by her sister's mental illness.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Cowed by a sadistic nurse, the inmates of a mental hospital are galvanized by a new patient, the free-spirited McMurphy, who enters a pitched battle of wills with the nurse.

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Sister Went Crazy

SONES, S

Cookie's short first-person poems reveal her unraveling world and concern for her own sanity when her older sister is institutionalized after a mental breakdown.

Woman In The Wall