When Michael Rosen's teenage son died of Meningitis, no words could describe how absolutely heart breakingly awful he felt about it. Life went on, as it does, and yet his sadness remained. He would go to readings before an audience of children and somehow his son's death would come up. He noticed that children had a very matter of fact way of greeting this news. That lead him to writing this book.
If you are trying to protect your children from falls off bicycles, troubles in Iraq or the Tsunami, you will not like this book. Don't buy it. It will engage them in emotions and thoughts you would rather them not feel or think. But for the rest of you, this book is priceless. And you the adult reader, whether you have lost someone close or not, will surely cry. But you are in good hands. Michael Rosen knows his audience and he is incredibly in touch with "his inner child".
The book is about grief. He describes what it is like to feel very sad. It is about the process of mourning. He describes "shouting in the shower" or stepping on the cat's tail. He talks about who can be sad and about being happy.
This book, evocatively illustrated by Quentin Blake, is a guide to what to expect when you are really sad. In this age of cancer and AIDS, where more and more young parents are dying, this book can be helpful as much for children as adults. And since it is a children's book, perhaps it will speak to children about personal grief, or what a parent might be going through.
Quentin Blake captures the grief, the darkness, the joy and the light, in so few strokes. Having heard Rosen speak at Jewish Book Week, I realized how intimate and true, the portraits in this book really are.
Sad book teaches children empathy, which frankly, they are not always very good at. I would recommend it for everyone, to be read once in a long while.
Some Other Rosens: We're Going on a Bear Hunt, You Wait Till I'm Older than You, Quick Let's Get Out of Here
Comments