The Day the Voices Stopped

Non-fiction by Ken Steele and Claire Berman
Reviewed by Stephen G.
Not in the NVHS collection as of this post


In The Day the Voices Stopped, by Ken Steele and Claire Berman, ken, a 14 year old boy living in Connecticut, started having hallucinations and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He started hearing voices that taunted him to kill himself. They told him, “Hang yourself.” Throughout the whole book voices are swarming his mind and making him go crazy.

When Ken was suffering with this disease his father would not let him be hospitalized. He loved everything about school, but having this predicament with his father encouraged him to move to NYC. As a 17 year old with no job, he dropped out of school and moved to the city. When he got there he got a job as a hustler. One time in the novel he almost jumped off a tall apartment building, but before he could the police saved him. This book tells us of many voices in his head and how many times he tried to commit suicide. He also describes the terrible treatment in the hospitals and how most of the medication made him worse. The hospitals were main obstacles in this book. Throughout the book he lived on the streets city after city. None of his family would care for him. Also he started smoking immensely and drinking because it muffled the voices in his head. Will Ken make it through these hard times? Will they come out with a drug to cure him?

I rated this book 5 out of 5 stars because I thought that it was very interesting. I felt that it was a book that any person could understand. I recommend this book to anybody who is curious about the side effects of schizophrenia. Overall it was a great read.