Using Literature to Help Troubled Teenagers Cope With Health Issues

by Bowman, Cynthia Ann; Cheripko, Jan

• ISBN13: 9780313305313
• ISBN10: 0313305315
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-30
• Publisher: Greenwood Pub Group

Summary

Today, traditional illnesses and high risk behaviors of adolescents have become interrelated through the multitude of physical, social and emotional changes young people experience. Good literature which gives adolescents the truth has incredible power to heal and to renew. This reference resource provides a link for teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults to those novels that can help adolescents 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. With the advancement in medicine, traditional types of health issues such as birth defects, cancer, and sensory impairment have shifted to more behavior related problems such as depression, alcoholism, and eating disorders. All of these issues and others are examined from both a literary and psychological perspective in thirteen chapters that explore health issues through fiction. Each chapter confronts a different health issue and is written by a literature specialist who has teamed up with a therapist. In each novel, these experts define the central character's struggle in coming to terms with an issue and growing in response to their difficulties. Annotated bibliographies of other works, both fiction and nonfiction, explore these same issues give readers insight into helping teenagers with similar problems, and provide the tools with which to get teenagers reading and addressing these problems.

Author Biography

CYNTHIA ANN BOWMAN is Assistant Professor of English Education at Florida State University.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	ix
Joan F. Kaywell
Foreword	xvii
Jan Cheripko
Introduction	xix
Freak the Mighty: Birth Defects and Disability in a Literary Friendship	1	(26)
Kathleen Carico
Paula Stanley
Izzy, Willy-Nilly: Issues of Disability for Adolescents and Their Families	27	(24)
Cynthia Ann Bowman
Phyllis A. Gordon
Bridging the Alone Space: Fiction for Young People with Sensory Impairments	51	(26)
Kim McCollum-Clark
Kelsey Backels
Tracking Adolescent Responses to Cancer	77	(20)
Jim Powell
Nancy Lafferty
Normalcy Was All She Wanted: Learning to Live with Diabetes	97	(14)
Sue F. Johnson
Claire J. Dandeneau
Focusing Our Attention: Reading about ADHD	111	(24)
A. Lee Williams
Albert Scott
The Friends: Promoting Adolescent Mental Health Through Awareness and Literature	135	(16)
Karen L. Ford
Charlene Alexander
The Craziness Within and the Craziness Without: Depression and Anger in Ironman	151	(24)
John Noell Moore
David William Hartman
Dying to Be Thin: Eating Disorders in Young Adult Literature	175	(22)
Patricia P. Kelly
Marshall D. Tessnear
Reading Anorexia in Nell's Quilt	197	(20)
Nancy Mellin McCracken
Jan Carli
HIV/AIDS: What You Don't Know Can Kill You	217	(26)
Nancy Prosenjak
Laura Sullivan
Diane Hartman
Conquering Alcoholism in Imitate the Tiger	243	(22)
Margaret Ford
Danna Bozick
Going Backwards: A Family Systems View of Alzheimer's	265	(26)
Joyce Graham
Scott Johnson
Index	291	(18)
About the Editor and Contributors	309