(3) YA Sixteen-year-old Melati suffers from OCD and calms her tormenting thoughts (imagining her mother's gruesome death) by tapping and counting. When race riots begin in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, violence explodes all around Melati and she's separated from her mother. With the help of a Chinese boy, Melati travels through the war-torn city in hopes of reuniting with her mother. A beautifully written, riveting novel.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(2) 4-6 Alice's storytelling dad is in a psychiatric hospital, having lost the ability to distinguish story from reality. Wild animals start appearing in town, seeking Alice to save the threatened Story Web she discovered when she was little. Blakemore skillfully uses shifting points of view in this complex and captivating tale. A realistic, honest consideration of the impact of mental illness commingles effectively with the fantastical elements.

Reviewer: Monica Edinger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2019

(2) YA This heartfelt biography traces Ballets Russes star/choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky's (1890–1950) trajectory from lonesome childhood through his 1909 Paris debut and ensuing mega-stardom to his diagnosis of schizophrenia and institutionalization. Curlee sensitively explores Nijinsky's contradictions, including as a magnetic performer with little social grace and as a sex symbol tormented by his own sexual desires. The beautifully designed volume includes Curlee's striking jewel-toned portraits and archival photographs. Bib., ind.

Reviewer: Katie Bircher | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2019

(2) YA Aussie teen Biz sees and speaks to her dead father and often feels detached from her own body. On a soul-searching journey to her father's outback childhood home, she suffers a terrifying break with reality; family, friends, and mental-health workers help Biz explore her father's death, understand her anxiety and depression, and realize her sexual identity. Fox's debut is a sensitively wrought character study expressed in distinctive, intimate prose.

Reviewer: Jennifer Hubert Swan | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2019

(3) 4-6 Gideon's unhappy that his family moved to Nevada the summer before seventh grade. He is, however, intrigued by next-door neighbor Roona, even though she sometimes wears a blanket cape and talks about magic. But Roona's life is complicated, leaving quiet, sheltered Gideon quickly out of his depth. Themes of parental mental illness and abuse are handled sensitively in this surprisingly weighty friendship story.

Reviewer: Renée Wheeler

(4) YA After her vivacious artist mother disappears (leaving clues that suggest suicide), Minnie's grief manifests itself as monochromacy--she can only see in black and white. This is devastating for budding artist Minnie, who also can't rely on her two sisters, both of whom seem to have moved on. The resolution is perhaps too tidy, but overall this is a sensitive, vivid portrait of grief and mental illness.

Reviewer: Norah Piehl

(2) YA Isolated high-school junior Ellis deals with her severe anxiety by preparing for potential doomsday scenarios. She meets Hannah, who says that fate has brought them together for the end of the world. Ellis, a deeply religious Mormon, must find a way to believe that the world will continue--a type of faith more complex than believing in doomsday. A too-rare, well-rounded portrayal of a contemporary religious adolescent.

Reviewer: Christina L. Dobbs | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2019

(2) 4-6 Sixth grader Fig feels obliged to downplay the effects of her father's bipolar disorder so that she and her dad can stay together. Neighbor Mark's help turns into a romantic relationship for Dad; the novel also includes another coming-out story--Fig has a crush on an older girl--but integrates these elements naturally. Details involving art and science lend specificity and keep the plot lines from feeling overly formulaic.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2019

(3) YA When she's first hospitalized for anorexia, twelve-year-old Riley wonders, "If I'm not skinny, who will I be?" After almost two months at the facility--where she makes friends, rediscovers a passion for art, works with a therapist, and eats--she finally acknowledges, "I am Riley." Written as journal entries, the epistolary novel believably captures Riley's disordered thinking and difficult road toward recovery.

Reviewer: Rachel L. Smith

(4) YA Overachieving June hears voices; hospitalization begins a journey toward treatment. Her boyfriend, Nick--a good guy stuck in a bad job--is jailed for stealing cars. When Nick heads to the Ozarks to disappear, June follows. This star-crossed love story feels a touch overdramatic but is lifted by empathetic portrayals of mental illness, rural poverty, and the titular pair's deep mutual affection.

Reviewer: Jessica Tackett MacDonald

(3) YA In this anthology, authors reflect on their challenges involving mental health--usually their own, sometimes that of people close to them. This candid look at a range of mental health issues also offers some discussion of individuals' management. The inclusion of multiple authors with similar conditions (particularly anxiety) underscores their varying effects. Websites.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax

(3) 4-6 North Carolina twelve-year-old Della tries everything to cure her mama's schizophrenia, even asking the Bee Lady for her magic honey that supposedly cures all kinds of problems. Della slowly realizes she can't change Mama's illness, but she can change how she feels about it. The subject matter of this story is heartbreaking, but Baldwin leavens the mood with an affectionately rendered setting, strong female characters, and plenty of hope.

Reviewer: Mariko Turk

(3) YA No one can know that Jetta's necromantic power animates her family's renowned shadow-puppet shows. When she and her parents must flee--amid a rebellion--they make an unlikely ally in Leo, a young man with his own secrets. A heroine whose supernatural ability and bipolar disorder are both significant, but not defining, characteristics; a vivid world inspired by nineteenth-century South Asia; and an epistolary structure make for a particularly compelling fantasy-romance.

Reviewer: Katie Bircher

(3) YA Seventeen-year-old Lizzie Borden is physically and emotionally abused by her cruel father and stepmother in this modern-day reimagining of the historical murder mystery. Painfully shy and suffering from a medical condition that causes blackouts during menstruation, Lizzie leads a miserable life until a charismatic new maid at her parents' bed-and-breakfast sparks hope and possibility. Spoiler alert: things don't end well in this dark, unsettling thriller.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(3) YA In Wintersong, Elisabeth (Liesl) miraculously escaped the Goblin King's underground realm alive. Now Liesl travels with her violinist brother to Vienna as his composer. Yet as a painful new distance opens between the siblings, so too does the veil between the Underground and the nineteenth-century world. Fluctuating between mania and melancholy (Liesl, per the author's note, has bipolar disorder), this historical fantasy overflows with beautiful and terrifying emotions.

Reviewer: Jeannie Coutant

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Susan Meyer. Twelve-year-old Scarlet (who's biracial) is powerfully bonded to her (white) autistic half-brother, Red, and constantly strives to keep their bipolar mother functional. When a fire in their London apartment separates the siblings into different foster homes, Scarlet determinedly searches for Red. Much is packed into this little novel, but the depth of emotion carries the day. Full-page framed illustrations appear intermittently.

Reviewer: Miriam Lang Budin

(2) YA Smart, strong high-school senior Grace tries to hide symptoms of the same schizophrenia that caused her mother to abandon the family. Revelatory motifs help readers discern who and what is real in Grace's world. Told in a cycle of voices corresponding to the seasons and moving among first, second, and third person, this is a harrowing, intricately plotted examination of the toll mental illness can take on a family.

Reviewer: Jennifer Hubert Swan | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2018

(3) YA Seventeen-year-old Klee, an aspiring artist who loved visiting art museums with his dad, is devastated after his father's suicide and a subsequent move to the suburbs. Narrated in the wake of a mental break that lands Klee in an adolescent psychiatric facility, this thoughtful novel de-stigmatizes mental illness with its sensitive portrait of a memorable young man.

Reviewer: Norah Piehl

(4) YA Thriller fans will devour this complex mystery narrated by seventeen-year-old Peter Blackman, a mathematical genius who suffers from panic disorder. The central crime is exciting but difficult to navigate, particularly as the narration jumps between past and present. Pete's mental illness is uniquely compelling: his unreliable brain holds both the questions and answers for everyone at stake. Those who hang on are in for quite a ride.

Reviewer: Rebecca Kirshenbaum

(3) YA Neuro-atypical Alvie Fitz loves routine, hates being touched, and prefers the company of animals. At seventeen she has her own apartment and a full-time job and looks forward to being legally emancipated. Then a romance with Stanley, who has a genetic bone disorder, upends Alvie's world. Steiger's prose is arresting, and the frank depiction of teen sexuality--particularly within a disability framework--is refreshing.

Reviewer: Robyn Bahr