100 books like This Train Is Being Held

This novel is extra special because it’s written by two author friends, one Black, one white, and shows the complexity of racial inequality and police violence firsthand with basketball as the backdrop. This moving story encourages discussion and will make you reflect. It’s also a great introduction to the two authors’ work, and especially interesting to see how Jason Reynolds has since grown into his role as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. 

This anthology is full of heart and features a wide field of sports and experiences and identities. The poems are a mix of serious, moving, and funny moments, but most of all they’re relatable and accessible. I’ve read many of the poems several times, making new discoveries with each read, and other poems beg to be read aloud in a spoken word performance. This is a great collection for teens to enjoy by themselves, or for teachers to share in the classroom. It might even inspire you to write your own sports poem.

This coming-of-age novel features a sixteen-year-old star baseball playing girl, but that’s just the beginning. Alex is biracial, raised in a white family, and she struggles to find where she fits in. Race, gender, identity, adoption, body image – this novel explores hard-hitting issues with the complexity they deserve. I especially appreciate that the author wrote from her own experience as a transracial adoptee.

Mountain towns, skiing, snowboarding, and sweet romance – this story is the perfect winter entertainment. A twist of fate lands Cally and Blake in the same high school after their vacation romance ends, but why is he acting like he wants nothing to do with her? The story complications grow as Cally navigates old and new friendships and lands a spot on the ski team, and then there’s the mystery of what Blake is hiding. This is book one of three in The Rules series and more adventures await, on and off the ski slopes. 

This is another novel written expressly for teenagers, and all the better for it.

Inflected by the author’s own autobiographical experiences—like Craig, the novel’s narrator, Vizzini spent a week in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager—It’s Kind of a Funny Story was the first work of fiction I’d read that articulated the adolescent experience through the language of mental health. It was here that I learned “depression” isn’t an abstracted emotion but the very real neurochemical imbalance that impels Craig to call the suicide hotline after abandoning his SSRIs.

There’s an uncanny familiarity to the circumstances of Craig’s breakdown—namely in how he struggles to remain above water at a famously rigorous college preparatory high school—and a fundamental earnestness to his story’s confessions that gilds even its grimmest moments with a fifteen-year-old's sense of impressionable wonder.

Nellie Bly was one of the great muckraking reporters in American history. She pretends to be insane and is admitted to the “mad house.” Along the way, she exposes the horrible treatment of those suffering from mental illness, but of her treatment in a boarding home, where spoiled beef was served.

Many at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Roosevelt Island suffered no mental illness; they simply didn’t know how to speak English, she wrote. “I left the insane ward with pleasure and regret—pleasure that I was once more able to enjoy the free breath of heaven; regret that I could not have brought with me some of the unfortunate women who lived and suffered with me, and who, I am convinced, are just as sane as I was and am now myself.”

Her reporting led to a grand jury investigation and reforms inside the asylum.

I attended an author event at the coolest bookstore in Tampa in The Exchange building, and Lisa Unger was being interviewed by Colette Bancroft, the book editor for the Tampa Times.

Well, the book sounded wonderful, and it really is. The heroine in this story is smart, clever, and managed to keep one step ahead of the unusual, troubled boy she is hired to babysit. I loved this story and now have a signed copy on my keeper shelf.

The Risk Pool shows the importance of accepting and loving our fathers for who they are instead of resenting them for who they never could be. Sam Hall, the irresponsible wreck of a dad in this warm-hearted and funny book, is by any definition a terrible father, yet his relationship with his son Ned feels real in ways that most fictionalized father-son relationships don’t. Forced to care for Ned when Ned’s mother is hospitalized with mental illness, Sam introduces his son to pool halls, bars, bookies, drunks, and the occasional petty crime. Though aware of his father’s many faults, Ned can’t help but be charmed by Sam’s easy-going life, and even when Sam disappears for years, the bond remains strong.  

I rarely encounter writing that deals so unflinchingly with the darkest aspects of human nature in such a beautifully nuanced way. This book does not shy away from heavy, even transgressive themes, including mental illness, parental negligence, sexual predation, and grooming.

It centers around teenage sisters Edie and Mae, who are sent to stay with their estranged father after their mother’s failed suicide attempt—but their close alliance fractures due to their separate fixations on each parent. Told from multiple POVs, I found the novel’s structure as intricately woven as a spider’s web. The final act, which leaps ahead fifteen years, is an absolute stunner. 

I would say this book, which delves into the complexities of mental illness, was way ahead of its time. Even as a teenager, I understood the deftness of using two simple words in the title to clearly illustrate the complexities of extreme moods.

The author sets this story in a suburban high school, which I could relate to, as a group of friends witness the increasingly erratic behavior of one of their classmates, Lisa. In deciding how to help, each friend must confront her own fears and prejudices.

Even though the girls often don’t know what to do, I loved how steadfastly supportive and loyal they remained. As a result, the book ends up being less about mental illness and more about how empathy and compassion can overcome the stigma surrounding it.