Get Rec’d with Amanda

Welcome back to Get Rec’d!

This time around, I have a couple younger reads: a picture book and a graphic novel. I’ve also include some nonfiction and horror. Look, we’re knee deep in spooky season, so I had to include a seasonal recommendation, though you’ll catch me recommending spooky books all year round.

Do you have any books you’d like to recommend? Or any slam dunk recommendations you’ve received lately? Let us know!

Borderline

This is history meets memoir as a psychologist who specializes in Borderline Personality Disorder discusses the often gendered diagnosis and his work with a particular patient.

An intimate, compassionate, and expansive portrait of Borderline Personality Disorder that rejects the conventional wisdom that this condition is untreatable, told by a psychologist who specializes in BPD

Mental illness is heavily stigmatized within our society, and within this already marginalized group, folks with BPD are deemed especially untreatable and hopeless. When, as a graduate student, Alex Kriss first began working as a therapist in the field, his supervisors warned him that borderline patients were manipulative, difficult, and had a tendancy to drop out of treatment. Yet, years later, when Kriss was establishing his private practice and a borderline patient known as Ana came to his office, he felt compelled to try to help her, despite all of the warnings he’d heard.

Borderline is the story of his work with Ana—how his successes with her led him to open his doors to other BPD patients and advocate for them. Borderline is also the story of the disorder Kriss traces accounts of the condition going back to antiquity, showing how this disease has been known by many names over the millennia, most of them possession, hysteria, witchcraft, moral insanity. All referred to a person—usually a woman—whose behavior and personality were seen as fractured, unstable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. Kriss guides us through this history up through the emergence of psychotherapy, the development of the modern diagnosis, and attitudes toward treatment today.

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Dearest

If you enjoyed Nightbitch (I did!) or like complicated depictions of motherhood and mother/daughter relationships, this new horror novel may work for you.

A new mom in need of help opens her door to her long-estranged mother—only to invite something much darker inside—in this “fast-paced and frightening debut” (Rachel Harrison) about the long shadows cast by family secrets, perfect for readers of Grady Hendrix or Ashley Audrain.

Flora is a new mom enamored of her baby girl, Iris, who arrived a few weeks early. With her husband still deployed, Flora navigates the newborn stage alone. But as the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur.

Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up: Flora’s own mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more Flora’s mother isn’t telling her about the events that led to their estrangement?

As stranger and scarier events unfold, Flora begins to suspect the house is not as empty as she once thought. She must determine: is her hold on reality slipping dangerously away? Or is she, in fact, the only thing standing between a terrifying visitor and her baby?

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Have You Seen My Invisible Dinosaur?

If you have a kiddo in your life who lives dinosaurs, I recommend this adorable picture book. A little girl is on the search for her best friend: an invisible dinosaur. The illustrations are cute and clever; definitely take a peek!

The creator of Sheepish (Wolf Under Cover), Off-Limits, and I’m a Unicorn brings her original whimsy to the tale of a child’s special friend who goes missing after a bath—or does he?

Help! This little girl has lost her best friend. He’s a dinosaur (not the extinct kind). He’s enormous (bigger than a panda!). He was last seen before she gave him a bath and washed off all the mud (maybe that wasn’t a good idea?). She’s tried to lure him with snacks and put up Lost Dinosaur posters, but nothing has helped. If only it weren’t such a clear day—if only it were raining, or snowing, or the leaves were falling, or . . . something. Would it help if she drew a picture? With delicate visual sleights of hand and an underlying sweetness, author-illustrator Helen Yoon invites us to see through a child’s eyes.

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Plain Jane and the Mermaid

A young woman often described as plain finds herself leading an underwater rescue mission. I really loved the illustrations of this one and it’s quirky cast of characters. I’d say the age range is older middle grade readers or younger young adult readers. (10-14 is the range on the graphic novel.)

From Anya’s Ghost and Be Prepared author Vera Brosgol comes an instant classic graphic novel that flips every fairy-tale you know on its head, and shows one girl’s crusade for the only thing that matters—her own independence.

Jane is incredibly plain. Everyone says her parents, the villagers, and her horrible cousin who kicks her out of her own house. Determined to get some semblance of independence, Jane prepares to propose to the princely Peter, who might just say yes to get away from his father. It’s a good plan!

Or it would’ve been, if he wasn’t kidnapped by a mermaid.

With her last shot at happiness lost in the deep blue sea, Jane must venture to the world underwater to rescue her maybe-fiancé. But the depths of the ocean hold beautiful mysteries and dangerous creatures. What good can a plain Jane do?

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