ReachOut Reads

Breathing Underwater
By Alex Flinn

Sentenced to anger management class for hitting his girlfriend, Nick keeps a journal and slowly comes to grips with his temper.

The Rules of Survival
By Nancy Werlin

Matt and his younger sisters spend their lives trying to keep their mentally unbalanced mother happy to forestall her anger and prevent subsequent beatings.

Some Girls Are
By Courtney Summers

Sadly Regina learns how quickly the tables can turn as she falls from popular to outcast and feels the stings and barbs of her former friends.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story
By Ned Vizzini

Depressed and contemplating suicide because of schoolwork pressure, Craig ends up in an adult psych ward where he moves toward recovery surrounded by a hilarious cast of characters.

Under the Wolf, Under the Dog
By Adam Rapp

Coping with his mother’s death, his brother’s suicide, and his father’s depression overwhelms Steve, but restorative time in a treatment facility helps him learn his place in the pack.

Skin
By Adrienne Maria Vrettos

After his sister starves herself to death, 14-year-old Donnie reflects upon her illness and its damaging effect on their family.

Wintergirls
By Laurie Halse Anderson

Haunted by her best friend’s bulimic death, Lia struggles with her own eating problems.

Nothing
By Robin Friedman

Trying to keep his father happy by keeping kosher and getting into Princeton, Parker is left with no time for himself and the stress sends him into a binging/purging routine.

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
By Chris Crutcher

Friends with Sarah whose face and hands are disfigured by burns, Eric remains her ally even after Sarah suffers a breakdown and is institutionalized.

Nobel Genes
By Rune Michaels

Always trying to live up to the image of his sperm donor, Nobel Prize father, the narrator learns the truth of his heritage from his grandparents after his mother is hospitalized with manic depression.

Ball Don’t Lie
By Matt de la Pena

Shuffling between foster homes, Sticky Reichard is passionate about basketball and his obsessive compulsiveness about practicing enhances his skills.

Kissing Doorknobs
By Terry Spencer Hesser

Tara’s OCD has become so bad that it takes her forever to complete her doorknob routine 33 times to leave home and then she counts the sidewalk cracks on her way to school.

A Blue So Dark
By Holly Schindler

Aura’s schizophrenic mother is an artist, which causes Aura to put away her own paints fearing she will show signs of the disease.

Cut
By Patricia McCormick

Placed in a residential treatment facility, silent Callie internalizes thoughts on her cutting as she listens to the other patients discuss their problems, from anorexia to substance abuse and overeating.

Hold Still
By Nina LaCour

Caitlin struggles with the suicide of her best friend Ingrid, until she finds and reads her journal and understands the depths of Ingrid’s depression.