Depression... the New Readers' Advisory

It has been a long time since I read a book that created its own depression in me, but it has happened. Sad as it is, while reading The Time Travelers Wife, I came so close to the end of the book at 1am, that I stayed up reading it until 3:30am so that I didn't have to wake up the next morning and be sad again. I cried so hard I woke up my roommate. For days I walked around in a sort of haze... it's a good thing I finished it on a Friday night on a weekend I wasn't working. The lasting effects of the 'book depression' didn't go unnoticed by friends and family (by the way... explaining your depression with a book title does not always make people want to read it).

Anyway, it happened again a few weeks ago while reading a series of books that left me in a 'book depression' for weeks. It all began with the book, The Road to Paris. When I first picked it up, I didn't know I would like it. The young black girl with braids carrying flowers on the cover made me think this might be a black Little House on the Prairie. It wasn't, and boy am I glad.

The story starts out at the end of the book, with Paris sitting at the dinner table, getting up to answer the phone and finding her mother on the other end telling her she wants her to come home. Through the rest of the novel, we follow Paris through multiple houses as she makes her way through the foster system with her brother.

I have to admit, I was crying almost from the very beginning. In a scene I can only describe as emotionally traumatic, it is described that Paris and her brother are locked in a closet, and when Paris has to go to the bathroom so badly she can't hold it anymore there is still no compassion... and she has to pee standing there in the closet. The shame that follows her through the homes that follow is excruciating, but as with most children's books... they don't leave you feeling like you have a hole in your gut. It ends as most books meant for kids do, with a semi-happy ending. Then you can cry out of happiness for the character instead of sadness for her situation.