| If you
like A Child Called It, you might like... |
| |
| Fiction |
The Boy from the
Basement by Susan Shaw (F SHA)
For Charlie, the basement is home. He's being punished. He doesn't
mean to leave--Father wouldn't allow it--but when Charlie is
accidentally thrust outside, he awakens to the alien surroundings of
a world to which he's never been exposed. Though haunted by fear of
the basement and his father's rage, Charlie embarks on a journey
toward healing and blossoms when he becomes an unconditionally loved
and loving member of the right foster family. |
| |
Living Dead Girl
by Elizabeth Scott (F SCO)
Alice, a fifteen-year-old girl who was abducted by Ray when she was
ten, lives in fear of what he is going to do to her and hopes death
will save her from the nightmare. |
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Identical by
Ellen Hopkins (F HOP)
Identical twins whose father sexually abuses one of them. |
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The Rules of
Survival by Nancy Werlin (F WER)
Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a
young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their
emotionally and physically abusive mother. |
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Because I am
Furniture by Thalia Caltas (F CHA)
The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both
relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister
but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends,
she finally becomes angry enough to take action. |
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Forged by Fire
by Sharon Draper (F DRA)
Teenage Gerald, who has spent years protecting his fragile
half-sister from their abusive father, faces the prospect of one
final confrontation before the problem can be solved. |
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When She Was Good
by Norma Fox Mazer (F MAZ)
Em spent the first fourteen years of her life suffering her father's
alcoholic rages and her mother's silent depression, and the next
three trapped with her abusive older sister, Pamela. Now Pamela is
dead, and Em is alone at last. Shy, sweet, and smart, Em does her
best to live as she imagines "normal" people do. But will she be
able to manage now that she's finally on her own? |
| |
Black-eyed Suzie
by Susan Shaw (F SHA)
Enter the world of Suzie, a dark-eyed twelve-year-old who
desperately needs to feel safe and worthy of love. Seeking only to
be "good enough" she remains motionless and silent for hours on end,
feeling the walls of her psychological prison pressing against her.
Ultimately, Suzie finds herself in a mental hospital where she
begins a long and fear-filled journey. To make sense of her world,
Suzie must piece together a puzzle that involves seemingly unrelated
clues--a broken bicycle, a torn picture, peacock feathers, and
more--which together reveal a secret that is likely to change
Suzie's life forever, and give her an opportunity to regain her
voice and reclaim her spirit. |
| |
| Nonfiction |
Broken Child
by Marcia Cameron (B CAM)
This powerful tale takes readers on a harrowing, unforgettable
journey into the nightmare of parental abuse and the darkness of
mental illness. Written by a woman who endured horrendous abuse from
her mother and became a split personality by the age of five, here
is the story of her agonizing childhood, the conflicting
personalities, and struggle back to sanity. |
| |
Stitches by David Small (B SMA)
A graphic novel that chronicles the life of American author and
illustrator David Small, detailing his sickly childhood and teenage
years, including his mother's oppressive silence and his cancer
caused by his father's medical experimentation on him with x-rays. |
| |
Beautiful Child
by Torey Hayden (371.9 HAY)
Seven-year-old Venus Fox's unresponsiveness was so complete that
Torey Hayden initially believed the child was deaf. Venus never
spoke, never listened, never even acknowledged the presence of
another human being in the room with her. Yet an accidental
playground bump would release a rage frightening to behold, turning
the little girl into a whirling dynamo of dangerous malice. Of the
five children in Torey's classroom that September, Venus posed the
greatest challenge -- though the other four had serious problems of
their own that could not be overlooked. Though all of the children
had different needs and afflictions, they had two things in common:
a profound, sometimes violent dislike of one another, and the desire
to be almost anywhere other than Torey's class. The school year that
followed would prove to be one of the most trying, perplexing, and
ultimately rewarding of Torey's career, as she struggled to reach a
silent child in obvious pain and need and, at the same time, create
an atmosphere of learning and cooperation in a class bent on chaos. |
| |
Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood
by Julie Gregory (618.9 GRE)
The author describes her life as the daughter of a woman afflicted
with Munchausen by proxy, a form of child abuse in which a parent,
most often a mother, invents or induces illness in a child in order
to gain attention from medical professionals, tells how she was able
to save herself, and discusses her efforts to have another young
girl removed from her mother's care. |
| |
One Child
by Torey Hayden (618.9 HAY)
Finally, a beginning... The time had finally come. The time I had
been waiting for through all these long months that I knew sooner or
later had to occur. Now it was here. She had surprised me so much by
actually crying that for a moment I did nothing but look at her.
Then I gathered her into my arms, hugging her tightly. She clutched
onto my shirt so that I could feel the dull pain of her fingers
digging into my skin. She cried and cried and cried. I held her and
rocked the chair back and on its rear legs, feeling my arms and
chest get damp from the tears and her hot breath and the smallness
of the room. |
| |
A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood
by Richard Rhodes (B RHO)
An award-winning author recounts the abuse he and his brother
endured at the hands of their terrorizing stepmother and negligent
father, and tells of the courageous role his brother played in
delivering them to the care of others who would protect and support
them. |
| |
Becoming Anna:
The Autobiography of a Sixteen Year-Old by
Anna Michener (B MIC)
The author tells the story of her childhood of extreme physical and
mental abuse at the hands of her parents and grandmother, discussing
the years she was forced to live in the garage, her stays at mental
institutions after being committed by her mother, and her eventual
placement with loving, accepting guardians. |
| |
Finding Fish
by Anna Michener (B FIS)
Antwone Fisher tells the story of his life, from his birth to a
prison inmate to his success as a screenwriter in Hollywood,
discussing his childhood and teen years in foster homes, his stint
in the Navy, his attempts to find his mother and father, and the
determination that led him to create the life of his dreams. |
| |
They Cage the
Animals at Night by Jennings Burch (B BUR)
Burch was left at an orphanage and never stayed at any one foster
home long enough to make any friends. This is the story of how he
grew up and gained the courage to reach out for love. |
| |
Three Little Words:
A Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter (B RHO)
Ashley spent nine years in foster care after being taken away from
her mother. She endured many caseworkers, moving from school to
school and manipulative, humiliating and abusive treatment from one
foster family. |
| |
The Burn Journals
by Brent Runyon (362.28 RUN)
When he was 14 years old, Brent Runyon set himself on fire. In this
chronicle, Runyon describes that devastating suicide attempt and his
recovery over the following year. |
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Trying to Get Some
Dignity by Ginger Rhodes (362.7 RHO)
Richard Rhodes's memoir, A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood,
etched an eloquent and unforgettable portrait of the emotional and
physical abuse that Rhodes and his brother suffered as children at
the hands of their stepmother. His book touched many men and women
who had also been victims of abuse. These survivors wrote to Rhodes
telling of their own abuse and how much the book had helped them
deal with their own memories. Trying to Get Some Dignity is
the result of these shared memories. The authors interviewed twenty
of these men and women in depth to create a book that reports their
experiences in their own words, forming an oral history that makes a
collective narrative. |
