Nowhere Hair - Sue Glader

Illustrator:  Edit Buenen

Publisher: Thousand Words Press

Pages:  32

Genre:  Picture Book, Dealing with cancer and chemotherapy

Source:  I received a review copy from the publisher

This is the story of a little girl trying to find the hair her mother lost.    You find her looking all around the house and making suggestions as to what has happened to it.  She finally asks her mom what happened it.  When her mom tells her it is because of medicine she takes for her cancer she reacts the way a lot of children do.  “Is it because of something that I did or said?”  She then goes on to explain how life has changed with her mother and how she especially expresses her fear.  She talks about her mother’s moods.  Her love for her mother comes through when she asks the reader not to stare or giggle when they see someone like her mother.

This one really touched home.  Shortly after I graduated high school a friend of ours was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I took her to her chemo treatments.  She had three small children at home.  Her youngest child was in my Sunday School class.  I watched them go through this process knowing they were going to lose their mother.  She showed them love, she was honest with them from the beginning.  The hardest part was the first Sunday after they buried  her.  Curtis sat in my Sunday School class comforting another child whose father had passed away the night before.  The preparation took the fear out.  It couldn’t take the sadness away.  Cancer touches young and old.  This is a book for both young and old.  It helps explain the scariest things about cancer to a child.  I think this book makes it easier to discuss this scary topic.  I would even go so far as to suggest that when a diagnosis is made, before chemotherapy starts that this book is read to the children.  It opens the door to explain what might happen to the one with cancer.  Children are more resilient than we give them credit for as long as they know what to expect.

This is definitely a book to be recommended to everyone.

Nowhere Hair is one of only 2 books recommended by the LIVESTRONG Foundation for

talking to children about cancer.

YouTube book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqZzTqYC15w