This children’s picture book is about a difficult subject; however, I think the author handles the subject very gracefully and in a way that doesn’t talk down to a child. Jenevieve Fisher is the author of I’m A Kid Living With Cancer. She introduces the main character who talks about what cancer is and how a person who has cancer gets tested and treated. The explanations are honest, direct and simple.
In explaining these issues, in this way, she takes some of the fear of such procedures out of them; making it easy for an adult reading this story to their child to explain what may happen to them (if they are a pediatric cancer patient). There isn’t an emotional script in the book about how a child should feel…this leaves the job of exploring the child’s emotional reactions to any given treatment or procedure open to discussion between the reader and the patient. That is as it should be because it is hard to write the reality of treatments in a meaningful way without trivializing it or overwhelming a child with a pre-conceived idea of how it will feel. Read the rest of this entry…
Unbearable Lightness is a memoir written by actress Portia De Rossi. It details her growing up years and her early years in Hollywood and her struggles with a healthy relationship between her self image and eating methods. She struggled trying to suppress her feelings of self worth and her self image with food and exercise. She also struggled with her sexual identity. Ms. Rossi is a lesbian who felt she had to hide her sexual identity from the media and her fans if she were to remain successful. While I do not condone homosexual relationships I can understand how her fear of being discovered contributed to her eating disorder.
The book is very explicit in it’s depiction of the mental and emotional struggle between the person who is and the person that they see in the mirror. Part of anyone’s struggle to feel love and acceptance depends on their spiritual condition; although not much is said about that in the book. Portia’s voice in her head abused her verbally…that voice, she calls it the drill instructor, criticized her and demanded an accounting of each and every morsel she consumed. She was reduced to a very strict process of what she ate, how, and when she ate, and the continual lowering of calories until she wasted away. She swung back and forth between binging and purging and then near starvation. Read the rest of this entry…
Eleanor Roosevelt is a very good beginner biography published by ABDO Publishing Company, written by Sarah Tieck and copyrighted in 2010. What I enjoyed about this book is the multiple photos and the information that covered so many different areas of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life. I loved the way the book described the social changes that Eleanor was instrumental in bringing about in our country; as well as abroad, through her work in the United Nations.
For an interested reader in history this book was very informative. It talks about Eleanor’s family, her education, her life in the White House and her political and humanitarian works. Eleanor lived a very full life. She and FDR made a huge impact on the United States and we still are affected today by many of the changes that they were instrumental in setting into motion during their lives.
If you are interested in learning more about this book continue reading here: http://www.abdopublishing.com .