We’re taking some time and giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the Redeemed Reader team. Today, Hayley interviews our Associate Editor and Staff Writer, Megan Saben. My mother read Charlotte’s Web and books by Lois Lenski, Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and many others. What is your first reading memory? Are there some books you remember a parent reading aloud to you? I grew up surrounded by books, a condition that has followed me into adulthood. I was always an avid reader of fairy tales and my mother despaired that I was wasting my time and would never read the classics. Although there are many classics I wish I had read,…

Three recent novels for middle-grade through YA feature characters with schizophrenia or depression. Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin.  HarperCollins, 2018, 245 pages. Reading Level:  Middle grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-15 Della Kelly thought her mother was on the way to recovery until that night she caught Mama up late, sitting at the dining table, scooping watermelon seeds and flipping them to the ceiling.  This is all too reminiscent of the time Mama ended up in the hospital after Della’s little sister was born.  During that time she didn’t even recognize her own family, and the bad time lasted for weeks.  Mama’s problem has a name: schizophrenia. …

The author of Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends them shares further insights about her experience with schizophrenia. Our readers are familiar with Simonetta’s many excellent biographies for young people. Last Friday we reviewed her latest book, a memoir of her experience with her son’s schizophrenia. Today she joins us for an interview: 1. Looking back on your three-year struggle with Jonathan’s illness, what do you see as your greatest enemy in that struggle?  How was it overcome? It was probably fear. Schizophrenia is such an unpredictable and incomprehensible illness. I never knew what to expect or what was going on in my son’s mind. And he often seemed…

Foundling, Lamplighter, and Factotum by D. M. Cornish. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2006-2010. Ages 12 & up. Reading Level: Young Adult, ages 12-14 Recommended for: ages 12 & up Book One: Foundling Rossamund Bookchild dreams of being a vinegaroon, one of the crusty sailors who sails the acid-laced, monster-ridden vinegar seas of the Half Contintent. It’s not an unlikely dream considering he has grown up at Madame Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. Two of his favorite teachers are old salts. Yet as readers realize within the first chapter when the school bully trounces and injures Rossamund in a fight, Rossamund is hardly militant. No, Rossamund is a dreamer and a…

Several of these picture books recently won awards (or honors) in the ALA YMA in January. And one of them is brand new, hot-off-the-press in 2019. All of them celebrate different cultures from each other, and different cultures from traditional American majority culture. And all are worth checking out from your local library! Thank You, Omu! by One Mora. Little, Brown, 2018. 40 pages. Thank You, Omu! is a delightful twist on the story of Stone Soup. In the original folktale, three visitors to a community make soup from their stones–and the various offerings the villagers end up bringing. In Thank You, Omu!, Omu ends up giving away all of her soup to those around her. At the end of the story, she has no soup.…

*Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia Through a Mother’s Eyes by Simonetta Carr.  Presbyterian & Reformed, 2019, 359 pages. Reading Level: Adult Recommended for: ages 16-up, particularly Christian parents, counselors, and concerned relatives and friends. We don’t think it will ever come near us.  Mental health is for pagans and unbelievers.  But the ranks of the mentally ill, depressed, anxiety-ridden, OCD, and schizophrenic are growing—even in the church.  Even among people we know and love.  Simonetta Carr has graced our reviews for years now with her outstanding Christian biographies of John Newton, Jonathan Edwards, Irenaeus, and many more.  Here she shares part of her own story: the descent of…