Every time I got on Amazon, there was this book that kept coming up as a recommended item: Kenneth Oppel’s The Nest.

I’d been hearing good things about this book, because I read a lot of book reviews and try to stay up-to-date on the newest releases, particularly in middle grade literature, so I finally found some room in my schedule and decided to pick it up.

It’s a really short read, but it’s packed with quite a bit of stuff. The main character is a kid whose baby brother was born with some metabolic issues. The boy, whose name is Steve, suffers from mental illness—anxiety most notably—and the book raises some great questions about what’s normal and what’s not, which was probably my favorite facet of it.

The Nest is considered a psychological thriller, which is unusual in the middle grade genre, but I found it to be tastefully written, scary but not too scary, weird but not too weird, fantastical but not too fantastical. Oppel writes very darkly, which I tend to love.

The main conflict in the story is centered around Steve’s baby brother and all his problems since birth. Steve feels a little forgotten by his parents, and he feels conflict within himself, because he loves his baby brother but he also wishes his baby brother were different so that he would have his parents and his “before” life back.

Early on, it becomes clear that Steve deals with some kind of mental illness, demonstrated in this passage, where Steve is telling his parents about a dream where he conversed with a giant wasp:

“I didn’t want to talk anymore, because I saw the fear in their eyes, and that made me afraid. Someone told me once that if you worried you were crazy, it meant you couldn’t be crazy. Because crazy people apparently had no idea they were crazy; they thought it was normal, walking around naked and yodeling. As I’d told my dreams aloud, I knew how insane they sounded—but I also remembered everything from those dreams, and they seemed real.
“Dad took a breath and tried to sound casual. ‘Maybe you should talk about this with Dr. Brown.’
“‘You think I”m crazy again,’ I said, and this time I was crying.
“Mom squeezed me hard. ‘You were never crazy. You were anxious, like a lot of people, like a lot of kids, and you’re also imaginative and sensitive. And wonderful.’ She kissed the top of my head. ‘So wonderful.’
‘I felt tired suddenly, in her arms. ‘I’ll go talk to Dr. Brown,’ I sighed. ‘But I want you guys to get rid of the nest.’

So he has been to this doctor before, but he clearly doesn’t really want to go back—mostly because what he wants, at the heart of him, is to be “normal.” This is such a sad reality for children with anxiety. They worry that they’re crazy. They worry that something is terribly wrong with them.

Steve also washes his hands compulsively and has other quirks that speak of anxiety and other neuroses:

“On the drive in to school, I used to silently name the same landmarks so I wouldn’t have a bad day. I had a relaxation tape I liked to listen to in the car. At school I drank only from a certain water fountain, and I washed my hands between every class. I also had hand sanitizer with me, just in case. Pretty much every day I worried I might feel sick and throw up in the middle of the hallway in front of everyone, and then no one would be my friend anymore.”

What I found so endearing about Steve’s neuroses is that we don’t meet a whole lot of characters like him in middle grade literature, yet there are many children who suffer from anxiety and depression and other psychological issues. So Oppel’s bravery in writing a character like Steve helps all those kids with the same kind of quirks at least feel a little more normal (if normal is what they’d like to feel). At most, it helps them feel less alone in their everyday struggles.

In another passage, Steve lets the reader see his feelings about his parents’ preoccupation with his baby brother. He’s talking with his therapist, who just asked whether he missed his imaginary friend:

“‘Not really,’ I lied. It wasn’t so much Henry I missed; it was having someone like him, only real, to talk to. The perfect listener, the person who could help me sort things out.”

I found this so sad—his parents are practically consumed with making sure his baby brother has everything he needs that they sort of forget that Steve is dealing with some issues of his own. And because he doesn’t want to cause them more worry, he just doesn’t say anything about what’s going on inside his mind—or the reality that feels like it might be fragmenting.

One of my favorite passages was this one:

“Sometimes we really aren’t supposed to be the way we are. It’s not good for us. And people don’t like it. You’ve got to change. You’ve got to try harder and do deep breathing and maybe one day take pills and learn tricks so you can pretend to be more like other people. Normal people. But maybe Vanessa was right, and all those other people were broken too in their own ways. Maybe we all spent too much time pretending we weren’t.”

It was a profound thought from a kid. Steve begins his thought by saying that those who are different must try to change to fit in and make people happy, and then he twists it with a truth about humanity: that we are all broken in different ways and that we shouldn’t pretend we aren’t.

This passage alone makes the book worth reading for a kid who struggles with something like anxiety or depression or mental illnesses. I have a son who has been flagged for depression and anxiety. You can bet I’ll be sharing this story with him, because the truth that is laid out from the mind of another kid who shares some of his tendencies is life-changing. Sometimes we learn best from the people who are most like us, and Oppel has given us a character in Steve that can help teach kids that there is nothing wrong with them; they’re just a little different.

I’m so glad that people like Kenneth Oppel challenge the traditional world of middle grade books and write a story that empowers children who are different to embrace who they are.