Charde’s soulful and beautifully written book deepens our understanding of incarcerated girls and the institutions that control their lives. Woven through the narrative is Charde’s own story about her difficulty managing the grief caused by the death of her son. As we read, we realize both the author and the girls are in the midst of trauma and grieving. We understand that, at core, this is a story about despair and empowerment and, in Charde’s case, a transcendent response. I recommend I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent to anyone who works with girls or in detention facilities and to the much broader audience, I mean all of us, who want to be able to turn sorrow into something meaningful.

  -Mary Pipher, The Shelter Of Each Other Reviving Ophelia, Writing To Change the World, Women Rowing North

Sharon Charde has written a big-hearted, beautiful book, with the light touch of a poet and the deep insights of a humanist. You won’t easily forget her or her girls. 

 -Susan Orlean, The Library Book, The Orchid Thief

Sharon Charde's delicate strength, her affection for her students (and theirs for her), her passion for the power and influence of poetry, will enrich any reader's life, as it has the lives of the young women she inspired. Her new book should be required reading for everyone.  It is marvelous.

-Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping, A Three Dog Life, What Comes Next And How To Like It

Sharon Charde, grief-stricken and adrift after the death of her son, begins leading poetry workshops at a residential treatment center for girls. Though strangers at first, the group soon forms bonds as a space for the stories of love, grief, addiction, trauma, and connection blossoms. No singular story emerges. Told in chronological fragments, I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent is a heartfelt, emotional tribute to the transformative power of human connection. This is not an easy story. Honest, at times brutal, the stories the girls tell, and the stories Charde recounts of her relationships with the girls over a ten year period, shirk redemption. Instead, they are relentlessly raw, strong, stories that remind us both of our own powerlessness and capacity for connection. The book's power lies in that impossible, entirely true contradiction. I loved it.

Tessa Fontaine, The Electric Woman

Vulnerability. Compassion. Transparency. Inclusion, Courage. Beautiful concepts, important buzzwords, but living them is an entirely different matter. Sharon Charde has lived them. Her book, I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent, is proof. In it, she maps the journey she shares with troubled girls in her writing class at a residential treatment facility. A masterful, poetic storyteller, Charde is able to break our hearts and heal them at the same time. The way she weaves the stories of her own loss and grief, with the loss and grief of the girls is stunning. What links Charde and the girls--and all of us-- is the human struggle to make meaning out of trauma and spin it into the gold of transformation. Anyone who has suffered and cares about our world (that probably includes everyone) will be moved and changed by this book.

-Elizabeth Lesser, Cofounder of Omega Institute, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, and Marrow: Love, Loss, and What Matters Most