Counseling Education Bibliotherapy Reading List: Cutting/Abuse/Dating Violence

In this lyrical, heartwrenching story about a forbidden first love, a teen seeks the courage to care for another girl despite her small town’s bigotry and her father’s violent threats. Growing up in conservative small-town New Mexico, fifteen-year-old Mara was never given the choice to be different. Her parents—an abusive, close-minded father and a detached alcoholic mother—raised Mara to be like all the other girls in Barnaby: God-fearing, churchgoing, and straight. Mara wants nothing to do with any of it. She feels most at home with her best friend and older brother, Iggy, but Iggy hasn’t been the same since their father beat him and put him in the hospital with a concussion. As Mara’s mother feeds her denial with bourbon and Iggy struggles with his own demons, Mara finds an escape with her classmate Xylia. A San Francisco transplant, Xylia is everything Mara dreams of being: free-spirited, open, wild. The closer Mara and Xylia become, the more Mara feels for her—even though their growing relationship is very much forbidden in Barnaby. Just as Mara begins to live a life she’s only imagined, the girls’ secret is threatened with exposure and Mara’s world is thrown into chaos. Mara knows she can't live without Xylia, but can she live with an entire town who believes she is an abomination worse than the gravest sin?

Love can be a very dangerous thing.   After her sister left, Caitlin felt lost.   Then she met Rogerson.   When she’s with him, nothing seems real. But what happens when being with Rogerson becomes a larger problem than being without him?   “Another pitch-perfect offering from Dessen.” —Booklist, starred review   Also by Sarah Dessen: Along for the Ride Just Listen Keeping the Moon Lock and Key The Moon and More Someone Like You That Summer This Lullaby The Truth About Forever What Happened to Goodbye

Julie, who is eight or nine, talks about privacy and about saying "no" to touching that makes her uncomfortable.

Kendra hasn¿t felt safe since devastating memories of childhood sexual abuse began surfacing, especially because she still can¿t remember the most important detail¿her abuser¿s identity. Kendra knows someone is always watching, following her and leaving menacing messages, and making her fear for her life. Kendra cuts to relieve the pressure; it¿s how she copes, along with her brilliant, expressive artwork. Her mother is too self-absorbed to listen, so Kendra finds support elsewhere: from her therapist and her art teacher; from Sandy, a family friend who encourages her painting; and from Meghan, a friend and maybe more. Will they ever learn the truth about Kendra¿s terrible secret? Scars is the story of one girl¿s frightening path to the truth.

The 2014 Winner of the William C. Morris Award When you've been kept caged in the dark, it's impossible to see the forest for the trees. It's impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars . . . In Stephanie Kuehn's brilliant debutCharm & Strange, Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself. He's part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost. He's part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable. Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present. Before the sun rises, he'll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths-that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.

Where do dreams come from? What stealthy nighttime messengers are the guardians of our most deeply hidden hopes and our half-forgotten fears? Drawing on her rich imagination, two-time Newbery winner Lois Lowry confronts these questions and explores the conflicts between the gentle bits and pieces of the past that come to life in dream, and the darker horrors that find their form in nightmare. In a haunting story that tiptoes between reality and imagination, two people--a lonely, sensitive woman and a damaged, angry boy--face their own histories and discover what they can be to one another, renewed by the strength that comes from a tiny, caring creature they will never see. Gossamer is perfect for readers not quite ready for Lois Lowry's Newbery-Award winner The Giver and also for readers interested in dreams, nightmares, spirits and the dream world.

While staying with her parents at a campground, a twelve-year-old-girl is sexually molested by her riding instructor and learns the importance of talking about her traumatic experience with her parents.

A riveting portrait of life after abuse from an award-winning novelist. Sixteen-Year-Old Jace Witherspoon arrives at the doorstep of his estranged brother Christian with a re-landscaped face (courtesy of his father's fist), $3.84, and a secret. He tries to move on, going for new friends, a new school, and a new job, but all his changes can't make him forget what he left behind--his mother, who is still trapped with his dad, and his ex-girlfriend, who is keeping his secret. At least so far. Worst of all, Jace realizes that if he really wants to move forward, he may first have to do what scares him most: He may have to go back. Award-winning novelist Swati Avasthi has created a riveting and remarkably nuanced portrait of what happens after. After you've said enough, after you've run, after you've made the split--how do you begin to live again? Readers won't be able to put this intense page-turner down.

Physical abuse is not the only thing that scars a child. Words hurt too, and children often have no way of handling the harsh criticism of parents. InThe Words Hurt,readers follow the story of Greg, whose father's problems have caused him to lash out at this son and fail to express the love he truly feels. Beautiful illustrations and a moving story provide critical support for children suffering from verbal abuse -- reassuring them that they are good, not bad people, and are not alone.