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

Harbor - John Ajvide Lindqvist

Publisher - Thomas Dunne Books

Pages: 512

Source:

Genre:  Adult, Horror,  Some Sexual content

From Goodreads:

From the author of the international and New York Times bestseller Let the Right One In (Let Me In) comes this stunning and terrifying book which begins when a man's six-year-old daughter vanishes. One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While the couple, explore the lighthouse, Maja disappears -- either into thin air or under thin ice -- leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to the island to regroup. He slowly realizes that people are not telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. What is happening in Domarö, and what power does the sea have over the town's inhabitants?

My Thoughts:

This was a strange book.  It starts with the disappearance of Maja.  Then the majority of the book is told not as a flashback but as back-story.  I mean we look back at the past with the present interspersed.  It is an effective way to tell a story.  They have listed this as a horror story but I thought of it more as a mystery or thriller.  The book is about a Swedish island that is full of mysterious secrets known by a few.    It includes a former magician that has bonded himself to a Spiritus, which is a centipede like creature.  When he allows his saliva to touch the body of the Spiritus they have formed a bond and he has obtained some of the powers from the Spiritus.  This is definitely one of those books that you can say nothing is as it seems.  The story is not written in the usual chronological way, which adds to the mystery.  It is told in a way that holds the reader. The people on the island  love the sea and at the same time, you can tell they fear it on some level.  The question is, why?  For the answer to this, I would suggest you read the book.  Maybe then you will find out why and how people, have for years just vanished.  Perhaps you will find out the true power of the sea.

Student Saturday: Dear Dumb Diary: Can Adults Become Human? - Jim Benton

Publisher:  Scholastic
Pages:  144
Genre:  Realistic Fiction, Diaries, Middle Grades

Today's Student Reviewer is Lillian

Anyone who likes to read the Dear Dumb Diary series would like to read this book because it’s just like reading her life.  Jamie Kelley is a girl who is full of imagination and wonders about very strange things, like do teachers smile, fart, and think that when you become an adult you lose your sense of humor and dignity.  Jamie Kelly is at school most of the time.

“Can Adults Become Human?” is a book about a girl named Jamie Kelley.  She thinks that teachers, and adults aren’t human and if her dad only has one pair of shoes then he definitely isn’t human, which I think is ridiculous.  I totally loved the book.  She is so exciting to read about.  My friend is just like Jamie and the same questions pop in our heads, even if they are ridiculous ones.