Teenage Well-being Platform

Teenage well-being platform

IN COLLABORATION WITH Eric T. Webster FOUNDATION

To feel good… To feel better… It’s what we’re all looking for, whatever our age, but maybe even more so at 12, 15 or 17. Certain periods are sometimes harder to get through, certain situations are more painful to face. Literature, writing or any other form of creative, artistic or even athletic expression—from cheerleading to photography, passing through hip-hop—can become lifelines to fall back on. Even better, they can represent key means of expressing and reenergizing ourselves, and of transforming negative emotions into recovered strength. Such means of self-expression are also safe and liberating ways to get through tough times and regain our footing. As such, they help preserve our mental and emotional well-being.

This Blue Metropolis platform provides readings, videos, and information on different realities that impact young people in particular.

Books that feel good

Reading feels good. Because books call on our imagination, but also our emotions. Because we get a sense that these characters are like us, that what they’re living through is the mirror image of what we’re living through. Because in books we can find answers to our questions, a solution to our troubles, relief from our worries, an easing of our sorrows. Sometimes a single sentence from a whole book is enough, a passage we can’t get out of our head, or that lingers in our heart.

Blue Metropolis proposes twenty or so novels and non-fiction books about different realities which, at one moment or another, we may all feel or witness: anxiety, friend breakup, depression, rejection, intimidation, suicidal thoughts, heartbreak, anorexia, grief, solitude, conflict, homophobia, self-esteem issues, etc.

Woman World, Aminder Dhaliwal, Drawn & Quarterly, 2018

Carry On, Rainbow Rowell, Wednesday Books, 2017

The Art of Being Normal: A Novel, Lisa Williamson, Square Fish, 2018

Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You, Joyce Carol Oates, HarperTeen, 2013

This Book Is Anti-Racist, Tiffany Jewell, Aurelia Durand, Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2020

The Marrow Thieves, Cherie Dimaline, Dancing Cat Books, 2017

Who Put This Song On? Morgan Parker, Delacorte Press, 2019

Pet, Akwaeke Emezi, Make Me a World, 2019

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas, Balzer + Bray

Wilder Girls, Rory Power, Delacorte Press, 2019

Felix Ever After, Kacen Callender, Balzer + Bray, 2020

Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard, Echo Brown, Henry Hold and Co., 2020