WOW Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight upcoming releases that we are eager to share.

Here is one that I am really anticipating. I think it is THAT book that I have been waiting for someone to write.

Chasing the Milky Way by Erin E. Moulton

Publishes June 12th from Philomel

Hardback 288 pages

In a book that pairs science with mental illness, and heart with adventure, Erin E. Moulton delivers a moving story about family, friendship and the lengths we go for the people we love.

Lucy Peevy has a dream--to get out of the trailer park she lives in and become a famous scientist. And she's already figured out how to do that: Build a robot that will win a cash prize at the BotBlock competition and save it for college. But when you've got a mama who doesn't always take her meds, it's not easy to achieve those goals. Especially when Lucy's mama takes her, her baby sister Izzy, and their neighbor Cam away in her convertible, bound for parts unknown. But Lucy, Izzy and Cam are good at sticking together, and even better at solving problems. But not all problems have the best solutions, and Lucy and Izzy must face the one thing they're scared of even more than Mama's moods: living without her at all.

Perfect for fans of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, Jerry Spinelli'sManiac Magee and Katherine Paterson's The Great Gilly Hopkins.

Why I am waiting- I have had a love hate relationship with most novels in the YA age group that handle mental illness. I think they do a real disservice to those of us with a mental illness by perpetuating the stigma of mental illness- we are scary people, mental institutions are scary places and haunted and the people in them are dangerous, and people with mental illness will try to kill you. This is all highly inaccurate and also if you are a teen who thinks you might have a mental illness, it would hardly encourage you to seek help. 

I have emailed back and forth with this author. I have read interviews with her. She comes from a background of working and living with people with mental illness. They are her normal. She grew up in a group home with people coming in and out as they needed. I think she gets it. She didn't Wiki bipolar disorder and write her story. She researched it. From all angles. Taking her background, her interviews with specialists, reading and watching interviews from the NAMI website, even the DSMV (the psychiatric bible of  mental illness diagnoses) and she even has resources in the back.  (At least the last time we wrote it did. It's always subject to change in edits and it had just been sent off for final edits).

I have very high hopes for this being the novel I have been wishing someone would write. Bipolar Disorder is my disorder. My two sons have it. Everyone on my birthmother's side of the family has it. And I am going to put this book in everyone's hand that tells me "just snap out of it" or "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" if it's the book I think it is. And if it's really the book I think it is, I will hop the fence and march to the house I can just barely see behind me anymore and leave a copy on my neighbor's porch, my former friend, who told me, at my lowest point in my life (well recently) that I was "a burden to my family." I don't think you should say that to anyone, mental illness or not, friend or not. I don't expect any kind of acknowledgement from her, but maybe she and anyone else that thinks those who suffer from depression have a "great life and have nothing to be depressed about" or that people that attempt suicide "do it for attention", Maybe, "they" will get some understanding from CHASING THE MILKY WAY! It's a lot to ask from one book, but at least it might open the dialogue.

What do you guys think?

Heather xxx