I love Where the Watermelons Grow for so many reasons. Will Della be able to hold her family together as her mother’s symptoms worsen by the day? RELATED: Looking for more tween books? Happily Ever Elephants has you covered! With her Dad distracted by trying to save the family farm and her mom spinning out of control, Della decides she is the only one that can heal her mama and save her family – and she refuses to let others in for help. The book opens with Della’s mother digging seeds out of a watermelon in the middle of the night, talking to people only she can see, and Della at once knows her mother is being tugged back down a dangerous road that once landed her in the hospital for months. This beautiful book tells the story of Della Kelly, a tween girl whose mother suffers from schizophrenia. How can we help these children feel less alone and more understood? One answer is to give them books in which they can see themselves and their stories.Įnter Where the Watermelons Grow, a powerful new middle grade novel by Cindy Baldwin. And the fact that there are so many adults afflicted means there are children struggling to make sense of a parent’s disease. What do these staggering statistics tell us then? Mental illness is not taboo. Of these, 1 in 100 American adults live with schizophrenia. The National Alliance on Mental Illness notes that 1 out of every 5 American adults experience mental illness in a given year. I have read so few middle grade books touching upon a parent with mental illness, yet it affects an astounding number of adults in the United States.
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