Books by Elizabeth Swados

At the Animal Rescue Store, it is up to kind-hearted Sidney to find just the right homes for his abandoned animals and so he is very careful when making his decisions, in a charming story featuring animals of all shapes, sizes, and colors--including rats, llamas, cats, and turtles!

Paranormal powers are the norm for this mystery about Cobra Kyte, a girl who discovers that she can actually visit people's dreams as a participant, thereby learning their innermost thoughts. Dreamtective is full of the zany humor of a spirited adolescent, complete with indecipherable secret codes and the wild fantasies of an extraordinarily fertile young mind. Cobra and the characters in this book will entertain, and surely encourage an interrupt in the far reaches of the mind. Those who read this book will have an opportunity to participate in a secret society of extra-sensory perception and other psychic phenomena.

When Chana Landau begins her job as a teacher at Harvey Milk High School, she leaves the protection of her traditional Orthodox Jewish enclave in Brooklyn for a school that embodies everything she has been forbidden to experience. In a hostile classroom filled with sexually "different" teens, street kids, and drug addicts, Chana's one support is Flamboyant, a 15-year-old prostitute and an accomplished writer whose brash exterior hides a secret. Flamboyant is an unforgettable novel of cultural difference, friendship, and faith.

In a haunting memoir that consists of four parts--one for each member of her family--Swados' own efforts to understand and avoid succumbing to the tragedy of mental illness that consumed others in her family constitutes one of the most compelling threads in this spellbinding narrative. "Extremely moving, tender, and life-affirming".--Booklist.

A family portrait devoted to each member--father, mother, schizophrenic son, and the author herself.

Two indifferent music students find themselves in a world made up of musical instruments who need their help to fight against the evil King and Queen of Flats and their plan to eliminate all music.

The author recounts how she decided to become a composer, describes her eclectic education, and offers advice on composing music.

A moving memoir in words and pictures of one woman's struggle with the little black cloud of depression.
Opening up the darkest corners of her world, author Elizabeth Swados takes us on an unforgettable journey that is by turns poignant and funny, and will be undoubtedly familiar to those who suffer from depression and those who love them. Through the author's whimsical drawings, readers get a unique view of the experience of depression: from the struggle to keep her condition a secret, to the strange effects of "new" drugs, to the small things that can trigger relapses.
For the thousands of Americans who suffer from depression, My Depression is a gentle reminder that they are not alone and that they can lead a fulfilling and happy life. It is an evocative, readable, and engaging story of an illness that is finally gaining widespread attention.

A picaresque evocation of the on-the-edge avant-garde theatrical world of the 1960's follows seven-year-old Rikki as he is adopted by an eccentric gypsy-like acting troupe led by an artistic genius and her ex-drag queen brother.

A young child wonders about the skies, fantasizing about the possibility of other life far away in the universe.

A young child wonders about the skies, fantasizing about the possibility of other life far away in the universe.