A+Child+Called+It

=**If you liked: A Child Called It……**=

Charts the abuse of a young boy as his alcoholic mother first isolates him from the rest of the family; then torments him; and finally nearly kills him through starvation, poisoning, and one dramatic stabbing.
 * [[image:a_child_called_it width="58" height="86"]]A Child Called It**

Born to a crack addict mother, America was raised by kindly Mrs. Harper, the nanny of a rich white foster family who gave him up “after he started turning his color.” The story begins in a treatment facility after a suicide attempt and alternates between the present mostly through his therapy sessions with Dr. B. and the past.
 * [[image:America width="62" height="87"]]America** **by E. R. Frank**

16-year-old Michener recounts a childhood of physical and emotional abuse, first at the hands of her family, then at two facilities (one private, one state run) in which she was institutionalized for much of her adolescence.
 * [[image:Becoming_Anna width="62" height="87"]]Becoming Anna by Anna Michener**

Twelve-year-old Suzie has become nearly catatonic; she cannot eat, sleep, or talk, but spends her days hunched in a chair. Only in this position does she feel safe from her mother's wrath. A concerned uncle sees her in this state and gets her into a mental hospital, where, with the help of empathetic caregivers and an excellent therapist, she finds the courage to talk about her mother's physical abuse.
 * [[image:Black-eyed_Suzie width="66" height="95"]]Black-eyed Suzie by Susan Shaw**

Leshaya is a young girl with a very troubled past. Her birth mother is a heroin addict and her foster parents neglect her. Early on her only comfort comes from listening to tapes of "the ladies," such singers as Etta James and Billie Holiday. She soon discovers she has a gift for singing as well.
 * [[image:Born_Blue width="60" height="90"]]Born Blue by Han Nolan**

Dibs will not talk or play. He has locked himself in a very special prison. And he is alone. This is the true story of how he learned to reach out for the sunshine, for life. ..
 * [[image:Dibs.gif width="64" height="97"]]Dibs: In Search of Self** by Virginia Mae Axline

Tish’s life at home is troubled. Her depressed mother spends most of her time at home, yearning for her estranged husband, who abandoned the family. Tish must take on the responsibility of supporting the family, including her young brother. Tish hides her problems from the world, confiding only in her journal. Unfortunately, Tish marks every entry "do not read," preventing her teacher from understanding her situation and providing help. Tish's diary entries are increasingly panicked and worrisome, as the condition of her situation at home deteriorates.
 * [[image:Don't_you_dare width="57" height="93"]]Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Margaret Peterson Haddix**

Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his mid-teens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. An artist was born -- first as the child who painted the feelings his words dared not speak, then as a poet and storyteller who would eventually become one of Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriters.
 * [[image:Finding_fish width="65" height="107"]]Finding Fish by Antwone Fisher**

Jadie never spoke, laughed, cried, or uttered any sound, may as well have been a ghost. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked in her own troubled world--until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence. Nothing in all of Torey Hayden's experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her.
 * [[image:Ghost_girl width="60" height="93"]]Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden**

When seven-year-old Georgie is beaten nearly to death by his mother and her boyfriend, the police take him out of his home and put him in a Catholic boarding school for boys. The only possession he brings with him is a rosebush he won in a lottery
 * [[image:The_Lottery_Rose width="64" height="90"]]The Lottery Rose by Irene Hunt**

Kevin, 16, is called Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked. Then he started to draw and paint and showed himself to have a quick wit and a rolling, seething, murderous hatred for his stepfather.
 * [[image:Murphey's_boy width="61" height="101"]]Murphy's Boy by Torey Hayden**

In an absorbing narrative that is both disturbing and cathartic, young therapist Hayden tells how she discovered that six-year-old, emotionally disturbed Sheila is, in fact, a genius whose uncle sexually abused her.
 * [[image:one_child width="64" height="97"]]One Child by Torey Hayden**

Based on a true, tragic situation in which Petey, born with cerebral palsy in 1920, is misdiagnosed as mentally retarded. Unable to care for him at home, his parents relinquish him to the care of the state, where he languishes in a mental institution for the next five decades.
 * [[image:Petey.jpg width="60" height="88"]]Petey by Ben Mikaelson**

When he is wrongly accused of gravely injuring his baby half-sister, thirteen-year-old Branwell loses his power of speech and only his friend Connor is able to reach him and uncover the truth about what really happened.
 * [[image:silent_to_the_bone width="60" height="91"]]Silent to the Bone by e. l. konigsberg.**

The children assigned to her resource room featured in this book are a 12-year-old girl who is pregnant; an 11-year-old boy who witnessed the murder of his father; a 7-year-old girl whose father battered her during her infancy causing severe brain damage and a 7-year-old boy whose behavior is described as autistic.
 * [[image:somebody-else-s-kids-torey-hayden.jpg width="78" height="92"]]Somebody Else's Kids by Torey Hayden**

An unhappy English teenager took her beloved rat and fled the chambers of horror, home, which was haunted by her sexually abusive father and her haughty, unloving mother. She shares a run-down room with a cocky young boy who leads a helping hand. Helen finally decides to turn around and face her worst enemy - who happens to be her own loving daddy.
 * [[image:badratcv.jpg width="58" height="110"]]A Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot**

In 1949 the author's mother, unable to care for him, left him at a Brooklyn orphanage. For the next three years he lived in institutions and foster homes, before he found caring people.
 * [[image:they_cage.gif width="62" height="92"]]They Cage Animals at Night by Michael Jennings Burch**

Julian Drew "lives" with his father, his abusive stepmother and her children, but it's not a life anyone would want. He buys his first NB on October 25 at Osco Drug in Tucson. Green spiral. 80 pages. 34 lines per page. He tries to write but his pen won't cooperate. Then he develops a secret code. Mysterious notebooks record his fight for survival and recovery. His mother died when he was in the fifth grade, leaving him almost instantly in the hands of "stepnother." She locks him in his garage room, virtually starves him, and inflicts an endless string of verbal and physical abuses that drive him nearly to madness. Awakened in the middle of the night by some primal sense of alarm, the sleep-disoriented boy watches his stepfather reach into his baby sister's crib and throw her across the room. And then he watches his mother step into the bedroom doorway and catch her flying baby. Patty deposits her pajama-clad children into the safety of her rusty old Buick, collects the bare necessities, and leaves. In a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, she and Jamie tough it out, slowly reinventing their lives. When beautiful, egotistical poet Ingrid murders the lover who dumped her, 12-year-old daughter Astrid descends into the hells of foster care, where she is sustained only by a fierce intelligence and great artistic talent. Shot and left for dead by her first mother, half-starved in a mansion by another, turned into a drudge by a racist, she nearly finds happiness and mutual love with Ron and Claire; but then Claire kills herself. Shopping with them, Ingrid wonders who would want a black (Christmas) tree, but I knew someone woulda belated Halloween, to decorate with plastic skulls or just for the pleasure of making their kids cry.
 * [[image:3_nb's width="64" height="88"]]3 NBs of Julian Drew**
 * [[image:what_jamie_saw.gif width="55" height="90"]]What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman**
 * [[image:white_oleander.gif width="71" height="76"]]White Oleander**