Here are 100 books that The Astonishing Color of After fans have personally recommended if you like
The Astonishing Color of After.
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Like most writers, I am extremely interested in the “what if” factor. What if food ingredients could make a person feel specific emotions? What if drinking from a spring in the woods could give you a superpower? What if fairies really do take care of and grow all plants and trees in the world? I love to read and write about ordinary people, living everyday life, who encounter threads of magic. Influenced by reading books in the genre of “magical realism,” I love to explore how a dab of magic can be used in realistic fiction to emotionally affect the characters and story arc.
So, this book was made into two movies, the first in 1981 and the other in 2002, but I first experienced this story by reading the book when I was a young girl in sixth grade in 1978. I remember reading the epilogue over and over again—it broke my heart to think how the greed of one man could ruin something so magical. I pondered whether it was a blessing or a curse to live forever, and the town of Treegap felt like it could exist in any wooded place. Whenever I find myself in a thick forest, I still search for springs that bubble up from the ground, taking me right back to those emotions when reading this great classic.
Winnie Foster is in the woods, thinking of running away from home, when she sees a boy drinking from a spring. Winnie wants a drink too, but before she can take a sip, she is kidnapped by the boy, Jesse Tuck, and his family. She learns that the Tuck family are blessed with - or doomed to - eternal life since drinking from the spring, and they wander from place to place trying to live as inconspicuously as they can. Now Winnie knows their secret. But what does immortality really mean? And can the Tucks help her understand before it's…
As a child, one of my favorite places was in the top branches of a tree. From up there I could watch the world pass by, remaining invisible. I could make up stories about the world below and no one would challenge me. The second best place for me was inside the story of a book, the kind that took you to magical places where children always found a way to win the day. I knew when I “grew up” I would write one of those empowering books. I became a middle school teacher and have since read many wonderful books for this age. Enjoy my list of favorites.
Carolina walks a fine line between reality and magic, a state of mind many a struggling child understands.
Stuck with her grandfather, whose mind is failing, she finds a special connection to the fantastical stories he tells of a lake and bees and a tree, all connected with love of family and one’s roots. She forms a special bond with her “crazy” grandfather.
His stories about the tree with the magical power to bring people back together especially rings true. Who doesn’t believe in the magic of trees, especially old trees with deep roots (I still do). When Carolina rescues her grandfather from the old folks home and convinces her parents not to sell the family ranch, everything comes together.
A beautifully written debut novel that weaves together magic and reality, about a girl's relationship with her mentally ill grandfather.
This powerful debut novel delicately blurs the line between truth and fiction as Carol unravels the fantastical stories of her mentally ill grandfather. When she and her family move to his deserted ranch in order to transfer him to a care home, Carol struggles to cope with the suffocating heat and the effects of her grandfather's dementia. Bees seem to be following her around, but the drought means this is impossible. She must be imagining things. Yet when her grandfather…
Maurice Sendak said, "Children do live in fantasy and reality, they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do." In other words, children do the impossible. Growing up, stories where the real and imagined collided were like fresh air when I felt like I couldn't breathe. They've always been important to me, and for many reasons, hold a special place in our literature. Now, as a full-time teacher, writer, and daddy, I get to be on the other side of that joy equation, guiding new readers and writers as they become travelers of the fantastic.
I love this book because it really erases the line between the real and the fantastic. I’ve been a Neil Gaiman fan since Sandman. This is a middle-grade book written for me. The path I took through this book led me back to my childhood and reminded me of Where the Wild Things Are, with its nearly seamless transition between the “real” world and the imagined.
Neil’s done this before with Caroline and the Graveyard. But Ocean is different. Here, I never lose touch with the real world. The turn to fantasy just makes the real world more dangerous. I think that’s an important change. When I was a child, when I daydreamed or pondered the things and people and dark corners that I didn’t understand, when I added the additional layer of the fantastic, it wasn’t really an escape.
'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a waking dream' ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
'Some books just swallow you up, heart and soul' JOANNE HARRIS
'Summons both the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, and the complicated landscape of memory and forgetting' GUARDIAN
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'My favourite response to this book is when people say, 'My childhood was nothing like that - and it was as if…
When Elliot finds herself dead for the third time, she can't remember her past, is getting the cold shoulder from her best friend, and has no idea why she keeps repeating the same mistakes across her previous lives. Elliot just wants to move on, but first, she'll be forced to…
I was the kid who always had a fantasy novel in her backpack. Fantasy required I stretch my imagination, be open to possibilities, and understand different concepts of reality. This curiosity fueled my academic career, steering me from philosophy to Jungian psychology and, eventually, many years later, to an apprenticeship with a traditional healer in Ireland where I put my hands in the dirt and learned things that touched my soul, like how the growth of plants relates to the moon, ways to alchemize medicine making, and the psycho-spiritual aspects of healing…. You know, magic. I hope reading through this list brings you as much joy as putting it together did for me.
I have bought this book so many times because I must always have it in the house, and I keep giving away my copies. This is the hot chocolate of books. It goes down sweet and easy.
Two sisters, a strong-minded apple tree, a catering company that’s just a little bit magical… It’s a modern-day fairytale. And, like a fairytale, little lessons are hidden in its page that will help you re-see the wonder of the world. It might feel light and frothy, but it feeds the soul.
Welcome to Bascom, North Carolina, where it seems that everyone has a story to tell about the Waverley women. The house that's been in the family for generations, the walled garden that mysteriously blooms year round, the rumours of dangerous loves and tragic passions. Every Waverley woman is somehow touched by magic.
Claire has always clung to the Waverleys' roots, tending the enchanted soil in the family garden from which she makes her sought-after delicacies - famed and feared for their curious effects. She has everything she thinks she needs - until one day she waked to find a stranger…
As a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I’ve helped individuals traverse grief and loss for over thirty years. But when my father passed away last year, I found myself feeling untethered, adrift in a barrage of emotions. In grief, I became more affected by even the smallest glimpse of beauty. The poem that perfectly voiced my heart. The spotted fawn appearing on the edge of the lawn. The purple of the eggplant flowering. Grief slowed me down, opening my eyes to the wonder of this achingly beautiful world we live in. It has become part of my story to endeavor to help others do the same.
I found this book of poems on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. The author wrote this collection following the deaths of her son and her father. She writes with such aching precision of the pain of losing someone you love.
I read many of these poems through tears, but they were cleansing tears—sorrow accompanied by a feeling of being seen, of not being alone. It is a gorgeous collection.
In All the Honey, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer holds both fine, honest sensuality and slow explorations of soul. What is shared here is a way forward in life, a fierce openness that refuses nothing—that knows damage and healing, darkness and radiance, sorrow and winged resurgence, reflection and laughter and learning.
I had depression when I was young, but I didn’t know what that meant or what to do about it. So much of mental health is invisible and nobody knew. I didn’t have the language to explain how I felt, or to ask for help, and I didn’t know how to find out. Any book that could have helped me jump those hurdles would have been incredibly valuable. Children relate to stories, characters, metaphors and pictures more than words. Giving children the tools to explore how they feel in ways they can relate to is really important. I wouldn’t want anyone else to feel as alone as I did.
Luna’s Red Hat does a fantastic job of explaining suicide to its readers in a way that is blameless and sensitive, delicate but not sugar-coated. It’s a hard topic to talk about, especially with children or people who haven’t ever felt suicidal themselves. You can tell in the way that Luna and her father talk to each other and about Luna’s mother that this was and is a very close and loving family, and that nobody is to blame for Luna’s mother taking her own life. This book has been a big inspiration for me. I hope I am able to write about mental health and other difficult topics with as much grace as Emmi does in this book.
It is a beautiful spring day, and Luna is having a picnic in the park with her family, wearing her Mum's red hat. Luna's Mum died one year ago and she still finds it difficult to understand why. She feels that it may have been her fault and worries that her Dad might leave her in the same way. Her Dad talks to her to explain what happened and together they think about all the happy memories they have of Mum.
This beautifully-illustrated storybook is designed as a tool to be read with children aged 6+ who have experienced the…
"A haunting YA mystery. Touching on everything from police ineptitude and community solidarity to the endless frustration of being patronized as a young person, this paranormal thriller confidently combines timely and relatable themes within a page-turning storyline." - Self-Publishing Review
"Biel's writing is fast-paced and sharp!" - author Christy Wopat…
I'm the author of the best-selling books How to Tell Depression to Piss Off: 40 Ways to Get Your Life Back, How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off: 40 Ways to Get Your Life Back, The Recovery Letters, and What I Do to Get Through. My sixth book will be, How to Smash Stress: 40 Ways to Manage the Unmanageable.
He describes the death of his partner from alcoholism and the events leading up to it in an unflinchingly honest and moving way. It's raw and personal but that's what grief is. It's beautiful and respectful and shows how grief is both a shared experience and so completely individual at the same time.
'Immensely moving and disarmingly witty' Nigella Lawson 'Such a moving, tough, funny, raw, honest read' Matt Haig 'Beautifully written, moving and gut-wrenching, but also at times very funny' Ian Rankin 'Captures brilliantly, beautifully, bravely the comedy as well as the tragedy of bereavement' The Times 'Will strike a chord with anyone who has grieved' Independent
Whether it is pastoral care for the bereaved, discussions about the afterlife, or being called out to perform the last rites, death is part of the Reverend Richard Coles's life and work. But when his partner the Reverend David Coles died,…
I love people who are totally lost because they are on the brink of their greatest discovery–their true nature. Even as a little boy I remember seeing that everyone has a purpose in life, but that is hidden to them. I have always felt that every step of the way, life seems to be a little off-track. But through authentic stories, I came to an understanding that right now, everyone is doing great things with their lives, even if they can’t see it.
I love this book because gay teen Henry keeps getting abducted by aliens. He’s trying to have a normal life as a high school student in Florida, but people think he’s a flake because he keeps going missing when the aliens take him.
The aliens give him a button to push if he wants to save the world from getting destroyed. Henry’s classmates f*ck around with him so much I wanted him to find something to give him hope not to destroy the world. His new boyfriend seems to be helping, but during a visit, Henry is taken by aliens and goes missing for a while, messing up his new romance.
It’s hard enough to be a gay teen, but to be a gay teen who is abducted by aliens on a weekly basis is something that I love about this book.
From the “author to watch” (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an “equal parts sarcastic and profound” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.
Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.
Memoirs have crept up on me as favorites. I could list many more. Please let me! As a psychoanalyst, I listen to the pains and struggles of individuals trying to become more at ease with themselves. They engage with their demons and try to make sense of how to manage the way their personal history has created their worldview and how to expand it enough to enter a present. Memoirs are another way of addressing such struggles. They have an elegance and a universality that emerges out of their individual stories. We learn about the other and we learn about ourselves.
Lisa’s husband dies as he is being treated for cancer. She writes about the first year after in which grief, madness, confusion, isolation, and fury coincide with Britain’s beginning Brexit madness. Nothing can be made sense of and yet we need words to express what’s happening. And then words provide for consoling and managing.
After the death of her partner of thirty-two years, Lisa Appignanesi was thrust into a state striated by rage and superstition in which sanity felt elusive. Then, too, the cultural and political moment seemed to collude with her condition: everywhere people were dislocated and angry.
In this electrifying and brave examination of an ordinary enough death and its aftermath, Everyday Madness uses all Lisa Appignanesi's evocative and analytic powers to scrutinize her own and our society's experience of grieving. With searing honesty, lashed by humour, she navigates us onto the…
Nancy Bo Flood earned her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and Child Development at the University of Minnesota and has authored a variety of award-winning books. Walking Grandma Home came from her own experience as a child, as a counselor, and as a daughter. She has lived and taught on the Pacific island of Saipan, where she worked with teachers and parents to create resources and programs for students with disabilities, and for the past twenty years, she has taught in the Navajo Nation. With Native educators, she co-founded an early-literacy nonprofit, Read at Home, which encourages parents to read regularly with their children.
This book shows a child grieving after the death of his mother. The gorilla is a subtle but strong metaphor about those who help us through the journey of grief. Words are spare; the illustrations are powerful. In this picture book, grief is shown as heavy, silent, and colorless.
Sometimes it can help to tend to gardens or fly kites or just think about something else. But mostly, it helps to simply talk about it.” Words and images in this book show a comforting and caring relationship between a boy mourning his mother and an imaginary gorilla. The gorilla encourages the boy to do the activities he once did with his parents – helping with the garden or flying kites. The gorilla helps the boy talk to his father about missing Mom, and in doing so, together, they find a way to heal.
This profoundly moving tale about a grieving boy and an imaginary gorilla makes real the power of talking about loss.
On the day of his mother’s funeral, a young boy conjures the very visitor he needs to see: a gorilla. Wise and gentle, the gorilla stays on to answer the heart-heavy questions the boy hesitates to ask his father: Where did his mother go? Will she come back home? Will we all die? Yet with the gorilla’s friendship, the boy slowly begins to discover moments of comfort in tending flowers, playing catch, and climbing trees. Most of all, the gorilla…
