These YA book recommendations can help you start some important conversations with your teen family members, students, or friends about staying safe and how to support survivors of sexual assault.
If you're a family member, remember every child is different. So before you read these books with your teen, read them yourself first. Then, judge if the information is appropriate for them.
We all have a role in preventing sexual violence. At The Blue Bench, we believe that how we educate our youth today is the basis for how we, as a community, respond to sexual violence tomorrow.
Asking for it by Louise O'Neill
- After 18-year-old Emma O'Donovan is found on her doorstep disheveled, bleeding, and disoriented, with no memory of the party she attended the night before, viral photographs from the party set off a criminal investigation that divides her quiet Irish town.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Speak chronicles the struggles of thirteen-year-old Melinda Sordino after another student rapes her at a party the summer before her freshman year of high school. From Goodreads: "...an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.
Sexual Assault: The Ultimate Teen Guide (Volume 51) by Olivia Ghafoerkhan
- From Goodreads: In Sexual Assault: The Ultimate Teen Guide, Olivia Ghafoerkhan describes the various ways sexual violence can be perpetrated, discusses myths many teens believe about the subject, and outlines how young adults can get the help they need to begin the healing process.
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
- From The New York Times: What Lyga gives only glimpses of, through Josh’s difficulty connecting to Rachel (or almost anyone else in his life), is the collateral damage caused by child abuse. Still, the novel vividly explores the gray areas between love, lust, right and wrong. Josh has nearly convinced himself that he bears the responsibility for the affair with Eve, rather than the other way round until he’s finally able to end that chapter for good.
If you need help knowing where to start the conversation with your teen about sexual assault, we recommend these resources:
