Oof and Pib come from an ancient tribe. They know hardly any words - in fact they only know how to say their own names - but it doesn't stop them from being the best of friends and doing everything together . . . Until Oof starts inventing all sorts of NEW words, and Pib feels so jealous that he does something to threaten their friendship forever. Can Pib come up with a word of his own to make things right again? A funny and poignant tale about friendship, forgiveness, and the discovery of new words . . . including one that can be the hardest of all to say . . .
"Charmingly silly...features bouncy, rhyming text that will enchant readers." —Kirkus Reviews An octopus falls from the sky one day. It lands on a roof and there it stays. The village’s children quickly make friends with it, even though the adults are wary. But the octopus proves very handy indeed, making a perfect slide, helping out with some painting, and even rescuing a cat stuck in a tree. But just when all the neighbors decide they want an octopus of their very own, it disappears. Where has it gone and will it come back?
“Emotional, thoughtful, and a true testament to the power of friendship”—Locus Magazine Teen Wolf meets Emergency Contact in this sharply observed, hilarious, and heartwarming debut young adult novel about friendship, chronic illness, and . . . werewolves. Priya worked hard to pursue her premed dreams at Stanford, but the fallout from undiagnosed Lyme disease sends her back to her childhood home in New Jersey during her sophomore year—and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses. When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something out of character: she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the horrifying creature that's shut in the basement. With Brigid nowhere to be found, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be a werewolf—and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid's unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.
This book explores the author's pioneering work with severely disturbed patients, to show what it means to work and think as a psychoanalyst about transference and the internal world of a psychotic patient, with all the difficulties involved in continuing to treat and engage with even severely ill patients. As the author suggests, to be a psychoanalyst is to think about transference, the patient's internal world and projective identifications onto the therapist and onto persons in the external world. In particular, the author examines patients who express their mental state through fantasies about their body image. For example, the fantasy of an emptying of the self is discussed through the case of the patient Pierre, who asserts that he has no more blood or liquids in his body. Similarly, the fantasies of a young man who says that bats are flying out of his cheeks incarnate the anxiety of his first months of life expressed through his body. Indeed, the author's particular focus is on the importance of the first months and years in the life of these patients.
