Crying through the glowing bird books

I used to not be a weeper.  Really I wasn't.  I'm sure I cried at socially acceptable times, but I made it through lots of sad movies, two teenage break-ups and numerous oral reports without thinking, "I cannot talk about bison or Tasmanian Devils in class because I will blubber.*"

Then something changed.  Then I became the me of now who needs tissue for most movies, many sermons, anything to do with genocide and extinction, and a smattering of seemingly random news and history events (women's soccer, Prague spring, and ski jumpers from countries without snow make me bawl).

So I'm about to write three books that have made me cry recently, and I can think of three directions I could take in writing about them.   1) All three are books whose narrators are "different". One is an autistic 15 year-old in England, one a young girl with Asperger's in Virginia, and one is a 17-year-old in Indiana who probably is bipolar, but refuses to be diagnosed or labeled.  All three are very well written and the successfully transported me into somebody else's head space where I felt uncomfortable (and slightly guilty about being glad I am "normal"), which I could tie into Pediatric Stroke Awareness as I point out how often pediatric stroke survivors have sensory processing and emotional regulation issues and just "think differently" (literally via different pathways) than others. I'd use the books as reminder to be compassionate with teenagers, parents of teenagers, parents of special needs kids, and everyone else.
2) I could rant about compassion for cryers: other forms of emotional outburst are so much better accepted.
3) I could write about the glowing and bird symbols and references.

But I think I will just write them here, recommend with qualification that you read them, and take myself to bed to get a few pages into a "book from the happy section" before I end up crying myself to sleep.

The books are:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
and
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (with characters Violet and Finch)

Happy (or not) reading!

*Yes, I have cried in class talking about these topics.
Oh, and for the record, it was 13 years ago today I that I met the Mister.  He was confused when I brought it up yesterday.