Children’s Literature and Cancer
Earlier this year, I became close friends with another education major that was diagnosed a year ago with adrenal cancer. I often talk with her about how ignorant other people can be about diseases and how people should be more educated about topics such as cancer. We agreed that one of the best ways that we can educate
others as teachers is through literature. These discussions sparked the idea for my topic for my final TE 448 paper: how cancer is presented in children’s literature. I wanted to find good literature that a parent could read to their child when someone their child loves is affected with cancer or when the child has cancer themselves. Before I began searching the library shelves for books related to this topic, it was important for me to read a scholarly article about how parents have coped with this topic previously.
The article I read was called “Adjustment and coping by parents of children with cancer: a review of the literature,” by Martha A. Grootenhuis and Bob F. Last. This piece described parents whose children were suffering from cancer, and how their lives were affected. Distress can occur for parents in all aspects of their lives, including their psychological wellness, marriage, and the overall functioning of their family. Parents find different ways to cope with their distress and it truly does affect the entire family. Stress has been shown to be increased especially in parents whose children are in active treatment of their cancer. Methods of coping included communication, social support, and a search for meaning (praying and religion). These parents have to cope with an extremely stressful and abnormal situation and not all tests can accurately measure their levels of adjustment and coping. Ultimately, the main point that I got from this article was that having cancer does not just affect the patient; rather, it affects their family in sometimes immeasurable ways.
By thinking about how cancer affects the entire family, I looked specifically for books that had to do with how families coped with one of their loved ones having cancer. The selection of literature at the East Lansing Public Library was fairly limited in their selection of children’s books about cancer, but I was able to find three books I thought were fairly good in terms of how they represented the different families and situations.
Review 1:
Jackson, Mikayla A. Dear Mom, I am sory that you had to get brest canser.
Beleville, Ontario: Garden Books, 2003.
Written by a seven-year-old, this story takes us on the journey that Mikayla Jackson went through as her mother becomes diagnosed with breast cancer. The text is extremely authentic and the inventive spelling would be relatable and enjoyable to young children as they are learning to read. Mikayla discusses the emotions that she felt as her mother was in pain and had to go through chemotherapy. Since it is written from the perspective of a young child, it would be an ideal book to read to a young child because they can relate to the language and emotions that Mikayla feels. Mikayla also illustrated each page, and it appears as if each drawing was done in pencil. The roughness of the pictures makes this book seem as if someone was paging through a little girl’s diary. Actual photos of the Jackson family at the end of the book show the family as they celebrate the end of the treatments and at the Race for the Cure event. It is an inspiring story that teachers the reader that having faith in the home will provide comfort during times of strife and throughout life’s changes.
Review 2:
Kohlenberg, Sherry. Sammy's Mommy Has Cancer. New York: Magination P,
1993.
Written by a breast cancer survivor, this book was written to help Kohlenberg explain to her young son what it would be like going through cancer. Written in very simple text, this book helps explain how cancer can happen to any family and that it is no ones fault. It also briefly explains some of the treatments that people go through; it is interesting to note, however, that Kohlenberg decided to refer to treatment as “medicine” rather than calling it chemotherapy. The pictures that accompany the book are drawings rather than photographs, and generally has people smiling in most of the pictures. This sets an uplifting tone for the book and will help remind children that there are still times for happiness when fighting a horrible disease like cancer. This book also gives good advice for parents with children about what to do before treatment, during treatment, and after treatment. A small glossary in the back defines such words as doctors, medicine, and sickness. Although at times it seems that the terminology in this book may be too simple, it is written from the perspective that you shouldn’t tell your children more than they ask you themselves. Overall, this would be an appropriate and positive book to read to very young children.
Review 3:
Walters, Debbie. Where?s Mom?s Hair? A Family?s Journey through Cancer. Toronto: Second Story P, 1961.
This tragically beautiful narrative is told from the voice of a boy whose mother has cancer. Real black-and-white photographs of the Watter family’s experience act as a timeline of the events that were going on for the family, and give an unbelievably vivid look at the emotions that a family feels when someone they love has cancer. The story begins with photos of the “hair-cutting party,” where Watter’s whole family obtained buzz cuts to make their mother feel more comfortable when she lost her hair. The pictures are then explained by the emotions that the boys felt: “You just don’t know how you are going to feel when someone you love is losing their hair because of cancer.” (10) The pictures are often presented in a humorous fashion; for example, the boys take the hair that was cut off their mother’s heads and put them in front of their faces to pretend they’re mustaches. Although this book is often light-hearted, it also shows the pain that someone has to deal with during their chemotherapy treatments, and how sick cancer make a person feel. One particular picture of Debbie getting her blood drawn during chemotherapy was very disturbing; in fact, maybe too disturbing for a young child to see. This book will teach a child how important it is for their family to always stick together, during the good times and bad. When one family member is sick, the whole family feels the pain, and this story was both haunting by the realness of the photographs yet optimistic in the families ultimate triumph through cancer.
Concluding thoughts:
While these three books were similar by the fact that they each dealt with families that had a parent with cancer, they were extremely different in how they were written. Kohlenberg’s story is told in the third-person (almost as if it were fiction), Jackson’s story is told from the first-person perspective of a little girl, and Watters story is told from the first-person perspective of her sons. The different perspectives in the three books made each story a completely different experience to read, even though the actual stories were fairly similar. The illustrations in the three books also made each story very different to read. The Kohlenberg book had pictures that looked as if they were painted, the Jackson book had pencil sketches done by the little girl, and the Watters book had personal photographs for illustrations. All three of these books definitely made the importance of family a major theme and I think they all ended on a fairly positive note.
Children’s books about cancer are still a developing genre of literature, and it definitely still lacking in some departments. It seems that most of the books that are out right now are about a parent that has cancer, instead of a child that has cancer. If a young child is diagnosed with cancer, they will certainly have a lot of worries and questions that could be resolved and answered from a good piece of literature. My friend with cancer suggested that we need more literature like the Kohlenberg book where the pictures are less graphic. She felt that illustrated pictures versus real photographs would be less frightening for a child, especially when showing treatments like chemotherapy. I also wonder how a child that has lost a parent to cancer would relate to books that are all about parents that have survived cancer. Ideally, more insiders like my friend will step up to the plate and write more novels that will present this topic to a broader audience, not just children whose parents have survived cancer.
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