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Click on cover to read endorsements and sample pages.

Honoring Pain

by Children Feeling Pain From the Illness or Death of a Loved One

This book is an insightful and vivid collection of stories and art, filled with expressions of fear, love and loss. These personal accounts are very real what it must be like for a child to suffer and experience these changes witnessed, written, and drawn by children. Beautifully illustrated, it is an excellent tool to teach Elementary to High School students about how to share and acknowledge their pain. Ten excerpts specifically giving advice for teachers, counselors & parents.

Inside Looking Out

Young male inmates, ages 17 to 20, share their true stories of how and why they ended up in prison. In an effort toward restorative justice, the writers express their grief and bitterness about the reasons behind their incarceration and their hope to mend their lives. They also share a desire for their readers to lean from their mistakes and to make better choices in life. A useful tool to reach at-risk Middle to High School students.

My Mom Had Cancer

By Bill Fedun

Bill Fedun is now nearly twenty years old, but when he was in first grade, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The essay he wrote at that time an essay that later won the Reflection Contest in the Westerville City School District forms the text of his book. The title alone is reassuring in its use of past tense, for this personal narrative reassures young readers that although cancer can be frightening, it can be survived. The child's perspective is especially valuable here: the narrator overhears his parents' conversation, fears change in his family, and notes how their routines are disrupted by his mother's stay in the hospital and her subsequent fatigue during chemotherapy. He makes his mother promise to wear her wig when she comes to his school. For young children facing similar situations, reading this book with adults would be a great comfort. The book provides little information about cancer itself; it spares children the details of tests and surgeries and chemotherapy. More importantly, though it focuses on family life, and Fedun's cut-paper illustrations alternate with full-color paintings to reflect the realities and moods a family would face during this time. The book also provides models for parents in talking with their children about cancer: the narrator cannot understand what is happening to his mother, who looks just the same to him, so he is allowed to feel the golf-ball-size lump, to see the incision, and to continue to hug and kiss his mother. These actions, like Fedun's book itself, make cancer less mysterious and invite questions and discussion. It would be a valuable addition to the waiting rooms and lending libraries of clinics where mothers are treated, as well as to public and school libraries.

Reviewed by Virginia Schaefer Horvath
Ohioana Quarterly, 2002

Finding A Way

By Brenda Bilbrey

Brenda Bilbrey's book begins with two children in the park asking a third person why she is in a wheelchair, and the text that follows is her response. Bilbrey explains what cerebral palsy is, acknowledging throughout her description that the orthopedic handicap develops in different ways and that those who are diagnosed with CP have a wide range of abilities. She emphasizes the importance of asking questions and interacting with people who have CP, and P. Lawrence Richmond's full-page, deep-hued paintings reinforce the view that people with CP can lead exciting and fulfilling lives. The girl in the story reaches for books on the library shelves, watches wheelchair racers, rides a horse, sits at a desk in a classroom, later has the wind blow her hair as she drives a car with adaptive controls. The book features a lot of sky-cloudy, clear, filled with stars to reflect the young writer's dreams for the lives of those with CP. It includes passages from Barbara Carraway, a special education teacher in the Columbus Public Schools, and from two of her students. In the words and images of this well-conceived picture book, cerebral palsy is made human and real.

Bruise

By The Children of The Hannah Neil Center

is a collection of brief writings rather than a story of one person's experience. It is also a chilling documentation of the struggles to understand and change destructive behaviors. As introductions from an art therapist and a language teacher explain, the writings rather and artwork in this book were created by the boys in the Hannah Neil Center's residential treatment program for young male sexual offenders. The center, which began when Hannah Neil opened the first Columbus residential program for homeless children in 1865, has continued to provide healing and resources for children with emotional and behavioral disturbances. This book is a sample of those boys' own expressions. The narratives tell of the heartbreaking abuse that these boys endured, but their perspectives are not just those of victims; their accounts tell of the boys' own episodes and patterns of hurting others and their recognition that others are feeling the same pain because of their actions. Many of the selections focus on the idea of stopping behavior that seems as powerful and uncontrollable as a speeding train. The writers realize that they should have told someone about their abuse before they became abusers themselves, and they urge any readers to 'tell if this is happening to you or others! The language these writers use is often stark, such as eleven-year-old J.K.'s statement, 'The person who hurt me was my father. The people I hurt were my sisters and my cousins.' Given the secrecy and shame connected with patterns of abuse, reaching a point of making those declarative statements is a tremendous step in the writer's healing. Such statements as 'it's NOT OK to abuse others because I'm angry' or 'hurting others is wrong no matter what the reason is further reflect the many difficult steps these boys have taken in their recovery, in realizing that 'the first step is honesty.' This book, with the background of each page painted in the disturbing yellow and purple colors of healing bruises, is no cuddly bedtime story. But it is a valuable resource for children learning to confront the issues of abusive behavior and for the adults who work with them and care for them.

By The Inmates for Orient Correctional Institution

UnLived Lives is the result of a creative writing project at the Orient Correctional Institution, a medium-security facility in central Ohio that houses more than 750 people. Susan Schmidt led a writing workshop for inmates that began with the goal of improving students' writing skills and self-confidence; the classes led to the creation of this brief anthology, a project that is part of the 'restorative justice' involved in rehabilitation. Each of the accounts is a frank plea for others to take better control of their lives and to avoid the kinds of addictions and violent responses that lead to crime. The writers share their sense of losing important relationships, illustrating the high personal costs of crime. As is appropriate for the young readers intended as the audience, the inmates rarely reveal the details of their specific crimes, and there is no glamorous view offered either of crime or of life in prison. Instead, the writers are passionate in their urging others to choose different paths. They expose their fears about returning to life outside, their dreams of accomplishing different goals, their turning to their faith to survive. The language is powerful and genuine, and each voice remains distinctive.