Zelah Green — Vanessa Curtis

A prizewinning story of a girl whose serious OCD starts to take over her life, how she conquers it with help and humor, and the friends with their own troubles whom she meets along the way

"My Name is Zelah Green and I'm a cleanaholic. I spend most of my life running away from germs. And dirt. And people. And I'm just about doing okay and then my stepmother packs me off to some kind of hospital to live with a bunch of strangers. It's stuck in the middle of nowhere. Great. There's Alice who's anorexic. Caro who cuts herself. Silent Sol who has the cutest smile. And then there's me." Zelah's candid voice allows serious issues to be explored with empathy. With wonderful humor supplementing the emotional heart, this story presents real problems for teenagers while never being being heavy-handed.