the lost girls of willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman

 

Based on the way state schools for the mentally retarded were actually run, this is the story of Sage, a 16 year old girl who has just discovered that her twin sister, who she had been told was dead, was actually at Willowbrook State School, a facility for mentally ill children. Sage goes to find her sister, and she is mistaken for her twin sister, who was missing at the time.  Sage experiences the horrors of being incarcerated in a State School as she fights to keep her sanity and find her sister.  Because this story is based on actual conditions of State Schools in the past, the story is horrifying and heartbreaking.  

Now Is Not The Time To Panic by Kevin Wilson

I am sad that I am finished reading this book, because now I am not reading it anymore.  I so very much enjoyed it.  I love the quirkiness and all the odd details and the feelings and images in the writing as well as the story, which I can't tell or explain because then I'd ruin the experience of the readers. I shared lines from the book with my son, who needs to read it, and with an online group, and I immediately got responses from many people in that group who were touched with the quote that I shared in the same way that I had been touched.  So freaking much awesomeness!  This story is set in 1996 before the internet could spread ideas and things like wildfire, but some things still did.  Frankie and Zeke, two 16 years olds accidentally set off something so much bigger than they could have imagined.  And this is the story of how that happened.