her books are aimed at more high school age....but they deal with kids/teens with serious conditions and fatal illnesses (cancer, diabetes, heart trouble, everything...)
I always pick up one of her books when I need a good cry.
Wow, does this bring me back! I was addicted to her books in junior high and high school. I think I may be a bit of a hypochondriac...don't know if that's why I read these books, or the result of reading them!
The most recent book to make me cry was the Friday Night Knitting Club.
This is the true story of growing up homeless. The author went on to be a very successful writer. This is one of the best books that I have ever read.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus—they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure."
The Notebook definitely made me cry....but The Wedding (which is like the sequel, I guess) was even worse!!! I cried throughout it and then my mom read it and she cried three different times!!!
Other People's Kids by Tory Hayden had me getting teary eyed throughout...and I read a good majority of it while on an airplane. LOL It's about a special education teacher in England who talks about her experiences and some of the kids she has worked with. I am a special ed teacher and I could see some of my students in the kids she was writing about. It just hit me.
My Sister's Keeper was so good too....definitely a tearjerker!!!
The first book I remember crying at was "You Shouldn't Have To Say Goodbye" which was my summer reading book going into the sixth grade. It was about a girl losing her mother to cancer.
Gone With the Wind, especially the scene where Scarlett runs into John Wilkes (the man she had always hoped would be her FIL one day) as he's going off to war, knowing full well that he's too old and will inevitably be killed, but unwilling to set aside his patriotism in the face of a war he doesn't agree with. I bawl like a calf at that part, and the part where the casualty lists come out. At that part when I'm watching the movie, I invariably end up, sitting on the edge of the couch, sobbing openly into a dishtowel. It's good to be emotional sometimes.
This is the true story of growing up homeless. The author went on to be a very successful writer. This is one of the best books that I have ever read.
I could just barely take the mother in this story - she upset me soooo much. I realize the mother was mentally ill, but she just made me so angry. It was a great book.
