Using Literature to Help Troubled Teenagers Cope with Health Issues. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Winter, 2000

BOWMAN, Cynthia Ann (Ed.). Using Literature to Help Troubled Teenagers Cope with Health Issues. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. 336pp. $39.95 (h).

The traditional illnesses and high-risk behaviors of today's adolescents have become interwoven due to the multitude of physical, social, and emotional changes young people experience. Through appropriate literature, adolescents can find the power to heal and to renew their lives. This reference resource provides a link--for teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults--to those novels that can help adolescents who are struggling with health issues. Educators and therapists explore novels where common health issues are addressed in ways to captivate teens. Using fictional characters, these experts provide guidance on encouraging adolescents to cope, while improving their reading and writing skills. Depression, alcoholism, eating disorders, and other issues are examined from both a literary and psychological perspective in thirteen chapters that explore health issues through fiction. Each chapter, written by a literature specialist who has teamed up with a therapist, confronts a different health issu e. In each novel, these experts define the central character's struggle in coming to terms with an issue and growing in response to the difficulties encountered. Annotated bibliographies of other works, both fiction and nonfiction, that explore these same issues give readers insight into helping teenagers with similar problems, and the tools with which to get teenagers reading and addressing these problems.