When John Schu was admitted to Linden Oaks Hospital in Naperville, Ill., as a teenager, the staff gave him a gray notebook and encouraged him to write in it every day. “I would write a lot in the beginning, but I refused to share anything,” Schu said in a phone interview. “I would do some of the assignments, but I would always say, ‘Nobody can read it.’”
He spent more than two years in outpatient and inpatient programs, receiving treatment for anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression. “Louder Than Hunger,” Schu’s best-selling novel for middle graders, is a fictionalized account of this ordeal (including “the Voice” inside his head, spewing criticism).
But back to that gray notebook. In 1996, while Schu was still at Linden Oaks, he appeared via satellite on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to talk about his struggles with eating. His mother was in the studio with Winfrey. On her lap, she held the volume containing Schu’s poetry, his goals for the future and a drawing of the inside of his heart.
“My psychiatrist had given my mom my notebook,” Schu said. “I don’t think I was ever honest in my writing after that because I felt betrayed. I became an unreliable narrator.” Thankfully, there was some catharsis in writing his protagonist, Jake Stacey: “Even though I’m not 100 percent Jake, I got to do the assignments I wish I had done when I was hospitalized.”
Now a frequent classroom visitor — he estimates that he speaks to around 1,500 students per week — Schu always emphasizes the importance of writing. “My favorite thing to tell kids is that I don’t write on the computer until I know the whole story,” Schu said. “Every draft is written in a notebook. I show them pictures of my notebooks. I always tell them that my notebook cost $4.83 and it was worth every penny.”
Throughout his 45-minute presentation, Schu scans the faces in front of him, looking for the student who needs a notebook more than anyone else in the audience. He has a certain radar for kids who are going through something, he explained; the ones who, like Jake, have a hard time taking up space. “I can see a heaviness,” Schu said.
Before he leaves, Schu tucks a pen into the spiral of a notebook and gives it to the child he’s chosen. He doesn’t make a big deal of it; he doesn’t want to overwhelm anyone: “I always say to them, ‘When I first start writing, it’s terrifying to fill that first page. I’ve already done that; I filled the whole page with a poem. So the notebook is ready for you, and it’s the most powerful tool.’”
