Books like Maxie by Mildred Kantrowitz

In Camp Green Lake, a boy named Stanley Yelnats must dig endless holes for a supposedly reformatory camp that really hides a buried truth.

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

In 1943 Copenhagen, ten‑year‑old Annemarie Johansen helps her Jewish friend Ellen Rosen escape Nazi persecution, learning courage and resilience while navigating war‑time hardships.

A young orphan girl from Canada makes her way to a Prince Edward Island farm and becomes a cherished member of a family there, all while proving she has a talent for making friends and learning languages.

A solitary Chumash girl is left on San Nicolas Island and must learn to survive alone, mastering skills traditionally reserved for men while facing danger, hunger and loneliness.

The Bell Jar is the sole novel by Sylvia Plath, a psychologically intense and autobiographical look at a young woman’s decline into mental illness.

Mexican farm workers must adjust to life in California during the Great Depression.

Eighteen‑year‑old Susanna Kaysen is admitted to McLean Hospital in 1967, where she documents life in the psychiatric ward, exploring mental illness, recovery, and the cultural landscape of the late 1960s.

xxxv, 338 pages ; 21 cm

In 12th‑century Korea, orphan Tree‑ear rises from a bridge in a potters’ village to follow his dream of making celadon by apprenticing with master potter Min, facing hardship and learning the art of pottery.

William Styron’s memoir recounts his 1985 struggle with severe depression, hospitalization, and recovery, offering an honest portrait of living with mental illness.

Andrew Solomon’s acclaimed nonfiction journey into depression blends personal narrative, case studies, and scientific inquiry to illuminate the illness’s complexities, treatments, and cultural impact worldwide.

A young boy meets the mysterious Fish Woman, learns the joys of fishing, and witnesses a pod of whales up close, discovering confidence and kindness along the way.

From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic-depression, and how it has shaped her life. Vividly, directly, with candor, wit, and simplicity, she takes us into the fascinating and dangerous territory of this form of madness - a world in which one pole can be the alluring dark land ruled by what Byron called the "melancholy star of the imagination," and the other a desert of depression and, all too frequently, death. A moving and exhilarating memoir by a woman whose furious determination to learn the enemy, to use her gifts of intellect to make a difference, led her to become, by the time she was forty, a world authority on manic-depression, and whose work has helped save countless lives.

A young Asian-American boy discovers that his face has turned old after he wakes up with it one morning.

A chroming spray of a magic paintbrush lifts young Steve and his elderly caretakers out of a modest Chinatown flat in San Francisco into a realm of wonder, where wishes can come true.

A 12-year-old girl recounts her experiences as a caregiver for a 77-year-old woman during the summer.

A young narrator dreams of spending an entire day with his grandfather, playing cards, visiting the ocean, and sharing a porch breakfast of bacon, exploring the joys of aging and family bonds.

Although at first five-year-old Sachiko is upset when her grandmother no longer recognizes her, she grows to understand that they can still be happy together.

Edward P. Jones’s award‑winning collection, *Lost in the City*, follows African‑American residents of Washington, D.C., as they navigate everyday challenges, clinging to hope amid loss.

When the Watson family settles in the coal‑mining town of Stoneygate to care for Kit’s widowed grandfather, his new friend John Askew invites him into the mines, where they play a game called "Death" and confront the ghostly past of generations of miners.