Join us in May for our Mental Health Awareness Month Reading Challenge. We challenge you to read one book that makes you happy this month, whether it is an old favorite or something completely new!
Participants who earn the completion badge for this challenge may visit the IDEA Lab at the Main Library to turn their virtual badge into a physical button to proudly wear or display. Pre-made buttons will be available in limited quantities at each library branch.
A reading challenge is a fun way to challenge yourself to read more, or to read books on a new topic that you may not have considered before! Beanstack allows readers to register for challenges available to their age group, log their reading, and track their progress.
Reading challenge themes range from our annual Summer Library Club to Mental Health Awareness Month. Sometimes we even host movie-watching or writing challenges. There’s something for everyone!
Create a Beanstack account and watch the library calendar for challenge announcements. When a challenge is available for your age group, register and track your progress as you go.
Mental Health Awareness Month Adult Reads
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Has Your Child Been Traumatized?
When a child has been through an upsetting or stressful event, it can feel overwhelming.Is my child traumatized? Are new behaviors normal, or signs of PTSD? What can I do to make my child feel safe again? In this wise and authoritative guide, psychologist Melissa Goldberg Mintz assures loving parents that the tools necessary for supporting a traumatized child are ones they already possess, from promoting recovery at home, to knowing when professional help is needed. Dr. Goldberg Mintz shares specific, critical information and insights into what trauma looks like at different ages, why some kids exposed to the same event react very differently, how to help a child through trauma triggers, and more. Most important, she shows parents how to ensure that kids don't feel constrained by fear--and can face future challenges with hope and resilience.
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Your Brain Needs a Hug
Imbued with a sense of humor, understanding, and hope, Your Brain Needs a Hug is a judgment-free guide for living well with your mind.
My Mad Fat Diary author Rae Earl offers her personalized advice on the A to Zs of mental health, social media, family and friendship. When she was a teenager, Rae dealt with OCD, anxiety, and an eating disorder, but she survived, and she thrived.
Your Brain Needs a Hug is filled with her friendly advice, coping strategies and laugh-out-loud moments to get you through the difficult days. Witty, honest, and enlightening, this is the perfect read for feeling happier and healthier and learning to navigate life without feeling overwhelmed or isolated.
An Imprint Book
“A validating, hopeful, and practical guide to mental health... heartfelt and honest... Teens struggling with mental illness will find comfort and valuable information in this superlative guide." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Perceptive and accessible.” —Publishers Weekly -
Drama Free
Instant New York Times Bestseller
From the bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a road map for understanding and moving past family struggles—and living your life, your way.
Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life’s challenges. For others, it’s a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden. In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.
Covering topics ranging from the trauma of emotional neglect, to the legacy of addicted or absent parents, to mental health struggles in siblings and other relatives, and more, this clear and compassionate guide will help you take control of your own life—and honor the person you truly are. -
Psychiatric Tales
Psychiatric Tales draws on Darryl Cunningham's time working in a psychiatric ward to give a reasoned and sympathetic look into the world of mental illness. In each chapter, Cunningham explores a different mental health problem, using evocative imagery to describe the experience of mental illness, both from the point of view of those beset by illness and their friends and relatives. As Cunningham reveals this human experience, he also shows how society's perceptions of and reactions to mental illness perpetuate needless stigma, for example, the myth that schizophrenic people are more likely to commit crimes than non-schizophrenic people. Psychiatric Tales is a groundbreaking graphic work; it deftly demythologizes and destigmatizes the disorders that 26.2 percent of American adults live with every day.
Concluding with a reflection on how mental illness has affected his own life, Darryl Cunningham's Psychiatric Tales is a moving, engaging examination of what is, at its root, the human condition.
Darryl Cunningham is the creator of the Web comics Super-Sam and John-of-the-Night and The Streets of San Diablo. He is a prolific cartoonist, sculptor, and photographer, and lives in Leeds, England. This is his first book.
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I'm Glad My Mom Died
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.
In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.
Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair. -
Real Self-Care
From women’s mental health specialist and New York Times contributor Pooja Lakshmin, MD, comes a long-overdue reckoning with the contradictions of the wellness industry and a paradigm-shifting program for practicing real self-care that will empower, uplift, and maybe even start a revolution.
You may have noticed that it’s nearly impossible to go even a couple days without coming across the term self-care. A word that encompasses any number of lifestyle choices and products—from juice cleanses to yoga workshops to luxury bamboo sheets—self-care has exploded in our collective consciousness as a panacea for practically all of women’s problems.
Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Fixing your troubles isn’t simple as buying a new day planner or signing up for a meditation class. These faux self-care practices keep us looking outward—comparing ourselves with others or striving for a certain type of perfection. Even worse, they exonerate an oppressive social system that has betrayed women and minorities.
Real self-care, in contrast, is an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems.
In Real Self-Care, Lakshmin helps readers understand what a real practice of caring for yourself could—and does—look like. Using case studies from her practice, clinical research, and the down-to-earth style that she's become known for, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real and sustainable change and solace. Packed with actionable strategies to deal with common problems, Real Self-Care is a complete roadmap for women to set boundaries and move past guilt, treat themselves with compassion, get closer to themselves, and assert their power. The result—having ownership over one’s own life— is nothing less than a personal and social revolution. -
State Change
A 30-day program for reaching a new level of energy, clarity, and calm, based on a paradigm shifting idea: You have to change your body to change your mind and mood.
Too often, conventional medicine treats the body as separate from the mind, ignoring physical issues like chronic illness and weight gain. Science shows that these issues are oftentimes intricately entwined with mood issues like depression, anxiety, stress, and persistent fatigue.
In State Change, Dr. Berzin draws on cutting-edge research and her work with thousands of patients to tell the complete story of how our bodies drive our minds, mood, and energy levels. This builds on her work at her nationally renowned holistic health service Parsley Health, where Dr. Berzin and her team of over 100 highly trained medical providers focus on treating the whole patient, yielding extraordinary results for those dealing with gastrointestinal, hormone-related, autoimmune, and mental health conditions.
This trailblazing book explores the new science of optimizing the body in ways that will help anyone attain a new baseline for energy, calm, and optimism. Dr. Berzin believes that treating common imbalances in the body is the only way to achieve what she calls a state change—a transformation to higher levels of mental focus, emotional stability, and flow.
Leveraging Parsley’s unique patient data and successful proprietary protocols, State Change includes a 30-day program for resetting the body, mind, and mood. With easy-to-understand advice and detailed personalized assessments, State Change is the ultimate gateway to a positive mental state and peak physical health. -
Self-Care Cross-Stitch
From the author of the successful and provocative Feminist Cross-Stitch comes a new collection of 40 patterns to help you practice self-care.
Crafters will love this snarky book with its 40 witty cross-stitch patterns that focus on promoting a healthy, self-affirming relationship with yourself. Whether you want to proudly announce that "Self-Care Is Not Selfish" or remind others that "You Are More Than Your Productivity" or "It's Okay to Not Be Okay," you'll find edgy slogans and sharp one-liners that make fabulous wall art or gifts. An illustrated basics section provides beginners with information on materials, tools, techniques, and framing finished pieces. -
The Power of Fun
If you’re not having fun, you’re not fully living. The author of How to Break Up with Your Phone makes the case that, far from being frivolous, fun is actually critical to our well-being—and shows us how to have more of it.
“This delightful book might just be what we need to start flourishing.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Adam Grant
Journalist and screen/life balance expert Catherine Price argues persuasively that our always-on, tech-addicted lifestyles have led us to obsess over intangible concepts such as happiness while obscuring the fact that real happiness lies in the everyday experience of fun. We often think of fun as indulgent, even immature and selfish. We claim to not have time for it, even as we find hours a day for what Price calls Fake Fun—bingeing on television, doomscrolling the news, or posting photos to social media, all in hopes of filling some of the emptiness we feel inside.
In this follow-up to her hit book, How to Break Up with Your Phone, Price makes the case that True Fun—which she defines as the magical confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow—will give us the fulfillment we so desperately seek. If you use True Fun as your compass, you will be happier and healthier. You will be more productive, less resentful, and less stressed. You will have more energy. You will find community and a sense of purpose. You will stop languishing and start flourishing. And best of all? You’ll enjoy the process.
Weaving together scientific research with personal experience, Price reveals the surprising mental, physical, and cognitive benefits of fun, and offers a practical, personalized plan for how we can achieve better screen/life balance and attract more True Fun into our daily lives—without feeling overwhelmed.
Groundbreaking, eye-opening, and packed with useful advice, The Power of Fun won’t just change the way you think about fun. It will bring you back to life. -
Black People Breathe
A thoughtful, practical guide featuring 33 mindfulness exercises centered on healing for the Black community.
In Black People Breathe, mindfulness teacher Zee Clarke draws on her professional expertise and her perspective as a Black woman to offer mindfulness exercises, breathwork practices, and meditative tools centered on healing and survival for those who have endured racial trauma. Studies show that mindfulness can ease mental health concerns, and having experienced the benefits firsthand, Clarke shares the practices that have been essential to her well-being.
Each chapter highlights one of the many systemic challenges that people of color face, offering exercises based on the emotions elicited from these experiences. Whether you're coping with police brutality, racial profiling, microaggressions, or even imposter syndrome, Clarke prescribes practical techniques that will help you process these complex feelings mentally, physically, and emotionally.
Beautifully designed with gorgeous, vibrant illustrations, Black People Breathe takes an inclusive approach to mindfulness, centering and validating the experiences of anyone who has suffered from racial injustice.
Mental Health Awareness Month Kid Reads
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When I Feel Worried
Everybody worries. Children worry, too--in new or confusing situations, or when someone is angry with them. This new addition to the acclaimed The Way I Feel Series uses reassuring words and touching illustrations to address a child's anxieties and shows him ways to help him feel better. Cornelia Maude Spelman and Kathy Parkinson team up once again to provide a comforting and empowering book that's helpful to all families. Includes a foreword for parents and caregivers.
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How Are You?
It's okay to have feelings! And it's never too early to encourage young children to talk about how they feel, whether it's happy, sad, and everything in between. In this very simple but effective board book, young children can respond to how the character feels, and think about their own feelings.
* Engaging character helps readers to recognize their feelings
* Bold images capture children's attention
* Sturdy board book is just the right size for little hands
An important addition to books about social and emotional growth.
* Great family read-aloud book
* Books for children aged 0 to 3
* Books for toddlers and preschool children -
Albert is Not Scared
It's Albert's first trip to the amousement park. He says he's not afraid to go on rides he just doesn't like ones that go up and down. Or left and right. Or around and around! But what happens when Albert ends up in line for the wrong ride? (Math concept: Direction Words)
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A Blue Kind of Day
A moving picture book debut about depression, sensory awareness, and the power of listening, from psychologist and author of Teaching Kids to be Kind.
Coen is having a sniffling, sighing, sobbing kind of day.
His family thinks they know how to cheer him up. His dad wants to go outside and play, Mom tells her funniest joke, and his little sister shares her favorite teddy. Nothing helps. But one by one, they get quiet and begin to listen. After some time, space, and reassurance, Coen is able to show them what he needs.
With poignant text and stunning illustrations, A Blue Kind of Day explores how depression might feel in the body and shows us how to support the people we love with patience, care, and empathy. -
Feelings
Meet Dot and Beau, twin panda toddlers who love to learn, play, and explore the world! This adorable board book highlights all the ways one expresses feelings told in lively, bold illustrations and simple text perfect for keeping little ones engaged and entertained. A wonderful introduction to social-emotional learning concepts filled with endless panda cuteness!
- Encourages confidence and self-expression
- Introduces little ones to early social-emotional learning concepts
- Explores feelings and how to express and recognize the feelings of others
- Bold pictures and simple text perfect for keeping little ones engaged and entertained
- Collect all four books in the Panda Panda series! A must for little panda fans!
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Balloons for Papa
A perfect book to help discuss mental health, depression, empathy, loss, and hope with young children.
Arthur's gloomy father rushes him through the park every morning, through gray and rainy weather. Arthur just wants a bright balloon from the park's vendor, but Papa always says no. One morning, the balloons magically appear at their doorstep, and Arthur figures out the perfect way to bring the sunshine out--and Papa's smile back--even if only for a few moments.
Brimming with affecting and poignant words, beautiful black-and-white illustrations, and bursts of color on every page, Balloons for Papa sends the message that even in the worst situations, there is light and love.
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I'm Not Scared, You're Scared
From the incomparable host of “Late Night with Seth Meyers” comes a hilarious new picture book.
When you're a bear who is easily scared, it's hard to have friends. Fortunately, Bear has one: Rabbit, who is very brave. One day, Rabbit urges Bear to face his fears and embark on an adventure together. However, things don't entirely go as planned, and the two friends learn the true meaning of bravery.
Equal parts hilarious and touching, this funny tale of adventure, bravery, and daring rescue will both inspire the adventurous spirit in all of us and make us laugh along the way. With the unfailingly witty voice of one of America's favorite comedians, Seth Meyers's debut picture book is bound for hilarity history. -
Celebrate! Feelings
Join our MVP Kids in a page-flipping, mood-flopping discovery of feelings. Children will learn to name and express emotions, gaining self-awareness and coping skills as they experience the daily ups and downs of childhood. Our MVP Kids also share sign language expressions of their feelings, helping maximize communication with friends and caregivers.
Rhythmic, rhyming text playfully describes common situations in which children feel sad or happy, angry or peaceful, shy or friendly, scared or safe, and confused or confident. Children describe how their body feels, such as fast heart-rate, clenched fists, shaky legs or blushing and provide techniques for calming the body and regulating feelings. Sign language instructions provide readers with expressions for happy, sad, angry, and scared, equipping children can share their feelings when words are difficult. Teaching tips for caregivers provide helpful insight into developing a child's emotional intelligence, deep breathing, and other regulation techniques. One of the many important takeaways from the book is that challenging feelings are not bad, but rather helpful in indicating our needs.
This book showcases diversity in positive ways with characters that span various cultures, ethnicities, family situations, physical challenges and more. Readers of all backgrounds will see themselves in these pages while learning to value the diversity within their own community and being exposed to differences from around the world.
About the Celebrate! Board book series
Celebrate everyday moments of childhood with MVP Kids board books for children ages 0-6. Sophia Day
interacts with children through memorable verse and inviting illustrations. Topics cover important routines, life
events, family changes, foundational math and science concepts, holiday celebrations, and more. Young
children follow the MVP Kids as they develop good character and learn important life lessons. Helpful Teaching
Tips sections are included in each book to equip and guide you toward a deeper understanding of each
subject. Join the MVP Kids and celebrate growing up!
About MVP Kids
Families with a diverse range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds drive the inspiration for child education and social-emotional learning. MVP Kids enables real-world kids to address the challenges in their lives through story-based character lessons where the kids interact at school, in social situations, and in their communities. MVP Kids board books enrich preschool readers while hardcovers and paperbacks focus onschool-aged children. Each MVP Kids book includes extensive coaching information for parents and educators that promotes character education, wise decision-making skills, and social and emotional learning.
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Be Who You Are
In a brand-new companion to his beloved classic It's Okay to Be Different, New York Times bestselling author Todd Parr encourages kids to be proud of who they are inside.
Be who you are!
Be proud of where you're from.
Be a different color. Speak your language.
Wear everything you need to be you.
Who better than Todd Parr to remind kids that their unique traits are what make them so special? With his signature silly and accessible style, Parr encourages readers to embrace all their unique qualities. -
The Don't Worry Book
From bestselling and beloved author Todd Parr, a new book that reassures kids everywhere that even when things are scary or confusing, there's always something comforting around the corner.
Todd Parr brings his trademark bright colors and bold lines to his new book about things that might make kids worry--from loud news, to loud neighbors, or a big day at school. With his signature humor and instantly recognizable style, Todd speaks out to kids who are feeling the weight of their world, offering solutions and comfort, as well as giggles.