Book Nook - Bibliotherapy Resource

Friday, January 23, 2015

Title: Okay For Now

Author: Gary D. Schmidt

Themes: Communication, Parenting, Developing Empathy, Validation, Self-Esteem, Social Skills, Developing Perspective, Grief, Individuation, Coping Skills, Bullying, Gratitude, DBT, Depression

Age Recommendation: Junior High through High School

Summary: Okay for Now is another beautiful coming of age story by Gary D. Schmidt. The main character, Doug, is an adolescent with all the odds stacked against him. Doug develops courage and compassion as he discovers the art of Audubon, finds solace in a library, and creates deep but unlikely friendships.

Ideas / Interventions: Like The Wednesday Wars, this is a good book to use with kids who enjoy reading. It is a story that pulls readers in quickly and keeps their attention. Okay For Now is a fun book to use for bibliotherapy. Doug's circumstances align well with the DBT assumption that: "I did not cause all my problems, and I need to deal with them anyway." One of the ways Doug deals with his problems is through his dry sense of humor, which resonates with a lot of adolescents.

Use this book in conjunction with education about common thinking errors. Have clients choose a character from the book that they would like to track cognitive distortions for. As they learn to notice these negative automatic thoughts expressed by that character in the book, discuss examples from their own lives of times they have employed specific thinking errors.

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

Bibliotherapy is a technique that can be employed to help navigate life's challenges at any age, but is an especially helpful tool when working with children and young adults.

This blog is dedicated to sharing bibliotherapy resources with families, clinicians and the community at large.

Simply put, bibliotherapy introduces important, and oftentimes difficult themes from a safe distance. As we engage in the process of understanding a problem and discovering solutions through the lens of a book, we develop the ability to then generalize those same solution-oriented skills to our own struggles.

Reading develops emotional and mental strength that other modalities of sharing ideas and information cannot replicate. For example, watching a movie made from a book is a different experience than reading the book itself. When we watch a movie we surrender our own creative interpretation of the story to that of the filmmaker; we are removed from the potential of creating an otherwise deep and personal relationship with characters and events that are depicted with written words and animated by our own imagination.

This blog is organized by themes and age group recommendations. I have also included a number of reference books for clinicians and parents. Reference entries will not contain summary or intervention sections. Please comment, share your own insights, and make recommendations for more resources as frequently as possible!