Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Challenger Deep

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

23 reviews

laurajones's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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maryy_r0se's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

“Sometimes there are moments when we objectively face the never, and it overwhelms us.”

Caden is a high schooler. 𝘊𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘸 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱. His behavior is changing. 𝘏𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘢 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘋𝘦𝘦𝘱. His friends are distancing from him. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘵. His parents are concerned. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯. He feels himself unwinding. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨.

This book really affected me. While compiling a list of YA mental health books for work, it was important to me to include a wide array of experiences. Most YA mental health books focus on depression and anxiety, and it’s very very difficult to find books that approach topics like psychosis and schizophrenia sensitively.

Caden is not definitively diagnosed in the story, although it does seem implied he has schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. I do not have either of those, so I won’t assess that representation. It was difficult to find reviews from individuals who have those disorders, but from the few I did find this book seems to represent them well. I do have bipolar disorder, and I thought that book really captured the extreme moods and psychosis excellently.

I think what made this book really stand out was the input from Neal’s son, Brendan. Brendan has schizoaffective disorder and the book was influenced by his experience. He consulted on and illustrated this book, and it added a very personal element. I would definitely recommend this book. My favorite scene was the NYC flashback and the moments surrounding it; the way the book came together and fell apart in those moments was breathtaking.

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criticalgayze's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

February has caused a major rut in my reading, and I am really thankful that grad school obligations forced me to finally get a book read. And I'm definitely not mad that it got to be this book to break my dry spell.

With the recent "developmentally appropriate" discourse surrounding book bans, one of the pieces that has risen above the noise is the conversation on curation versus censorship. Defined in pieces like this one from critic and author Roxane Gay, curation is that books should not be "banned" but that a library should be curated to fit both the interests and accessibility of the clientele while still pushing diversity.

When it comes to a topic like mental illness, curation of a middle grades or young adult shelf can be tough. While heavy-hitting books on race, gender, or sexuality can be removed if the demographic facing harm in the text is represented in your space, curating for genuine and earnest mental and physical health depictions that don't trigger a young reader can be tough as illness can be assured to impact at least one person in the room, no matter what the room looks like.

Challenger Deep is a great piece to include in your curation process in answer to this problem. What makes this book a good piece for any library is its ability to keep triggers at a distance. One of the ways in which the main character, Caden, copes with trauma is the creation of a fantastical world aboard a pirate ship that creates an extreme metaphor for situations he encounters. This coping mechanism also works for the reader as we get metaphorical representations of the moments of trauma, like suicide attempts, that reduce the need for bracing for young readers when approaching the text. The book accomplishes all this, however, without rendering the text fangless, as seen in the quotes below.

The one thing that dinged this book for me a little is that I found its heteronormativity a little unnecessarily present at times, especially one joke about Shakespeare that I'm still trying to decide if it was a bit of dated homophobic humor.

Quotes:
There are two things you know. One: You were there. Two: You couldn't have been there. (Page 1)
My emotions are talking in tongues. Joy spins into anger spins into fear then into amused irony, like leaping from a plane, arms wide, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can fly, then discovering you can't, and not only don't you have a parachute, but you don't have any clothes on, and the people below all have binoculars and are laughing as you plummet to a highly embarrassing doom. (Page 6)
Forget solar energy - if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations. (Page 53)
"You said the ship was too old-fashioned for the mission, and what you say makes a difference around here," he tells me. (Page 83)
I didn't get it at the time, but that feeling - knowing something is wrong, but not being able to pinpoint what it is - is a feeling I've come to know intimately. The difference is, I've never been able to find something as easy and as obvious as a rearview mirror lying at my feet. (Page 93)
"The moral of the story is that we must not free ourselves from our beasts. Nay - we must abandon all else in this world but our beasts. We must feed them as much as we fight them, submitting to loneliness and misery with no hope of escape." (Page 141)
"Your mind is in a cast now," he says. "Think of it that way. It was broken and now it's in a cast." (Page 148)
Don Quixote - the famous literary madman - fought windmills. People think he saw giants when he looked at them, but those of us who've been there know the truth. He saw windmills, just like everyone else - but the believed they were giants. The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe. (Page 163)
Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug. (Page 168)
He grins. "As time goes on, you'll find more and more flukes." (Page 213)
Still, if you've got to bring yourself within inches of your life just to cry for help, something's wrong somewhere. Either you weren't yelling loud enough to begin with, or the people around you are deaf, dumb, and blind. Which makes me think it isn't just a cry for help - it's more a cry to be taken seriously. A cry that says "I'm hurting so badly, the world must, for once, come to a grinding halt for me." (Page 262)
The stars will go dark and the universe will end before I get this year back. (Page 287)
"Yes, you have achieved the bottom," he says. "But the bottom gets deeper with each trip; you know that, don't you?" (Page 290)
Schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar I, bipolar II, major depression, psychotic depression, obsessive/compulsive, and on and on. The labels mean nothing, because no two cases are ever exactly alike. Everyone presents differently, and responds to meds differently, and no prognosis can truly be predicted. (Page 298)

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