Janet Ruth Young
Janet Ruth Young graduated from Salem State College and from the creative writing program at Boston University. She was a co-editor of the literary magazine stet and a founder of Writers' Circle, the writing workshop at the Cambridge Women's Center. Janet has published three novels with Atheneum Books for Young Readers, a division of Simon & Schuster.
The Opposite of Music (2007), about a teen boy who attempts to save his father from a life-threatening depression, won the PEN New England Discovery Award and was a Book Sense Pick, a Borders Original Voices selection, and an American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults nominee.
Things I Shouldn't Think (paperback edition 2012), about a babysitter who has thoughts of harming the child she cares for, was nominated for a CYBIL and received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. The hardcover was published in 2011 under the title The Babysitter Murders.
My Beautiful Failure (2012) tells the story of a teenage boy who volunteers at a suicide hotline and falls in love with a troubled caller.
An advocate for people with depression and OCD, as well as their families, Janet has given talks and interviews to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the podcast series Living with OCD, The Jordan Rich Show, The Writer's Block with John Ronan,the Massachusetts Library Association, the Marblehead Festival of the Arts, and many schools, book groups, bookstores, and libraries. She has published an article in the quarterly of the International OCD Foundation, and her books are widely used for bibliotherapy.
For more information, see janetruthyoung.com.
“Listen, Sean," Dani says. "I need you to do something. My treatment isn't over yet, and my mom and I still have rough times ahead. We need people we can really rely on. So think about whether you can be that person. If you're going to be into my mother, be really into her.”