Shusterman, Neal.
CHALLENGER DEEP
New York: HarperTeen, 2015
IL YA
ISBN  0061134112

Fifteen-year-old Caden Bosch has two realities. In one, he’s a high school student whose parents and friends start to notice his increasing paranoid thoughts and behaviors. In the other, he’s a crew member on a pirate ship on its way toward Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Earth’s seabed located in the southern end of the Mariana Trench. As a crew member, he struggles with a mutinous parrot urging him to turn on the captain. As his two worlds collide, Caden’s parents try to get him the help he needs in this powerful look at mental illness based on the experiences of the author’s son, who also illustrates the book.  (Oklahoma Sequoyah Award, 2017)