Kiss of Broken Glass by Madeleine Kuderick

Kenna is Bakered Acted–after being found deliberately cutting herself in the school bathroom she is sent for psychiatric evaluation for 72 hours at Adler Boyce Pediatric Stabilization Facility, aka Attaboy,

In this novel-in-verse, Kenna describes her roommate, Donya, rail thin Skylar and cute Jag, both patients and several doctors and nurses. She describes how she started cutting to fit in, always feeling less loved by her mother than her perfect sister Avery. She describes her love for her little brother, Sean. She details why another student, Tara, turned her in to the principal…not necessarily for altruistic reasons.

Kiss of Broken Glass is a compelling novel, in part because it is well written. While not graphic, it gets its point across, the beginnings of cutting, the need to keep doing it, that fact that three days at Attaboy isn’t going to change much…but then again it might be a small start.

The second reason Kiss of Broken Glass is compelling is that it is written from personal experience. In the Author’s Note, Ms. Kiderick tells readers that her daughter was a cutter, exposed to this as early as sixth grade, a statistic I don’t want to even contemplate. Her daughter was caught and as she says “involuntarily committed under Florida’s Baker Act.”

Cut by Patricia McCormick was the first book I read on cutting and quite the book it was. It may very well set the standard by which other books are judged. However, since then there is Scars by Cheryl Rainfield, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson and now Kiss of Broken Glass, which certainly holds its own on this topic.