'Dear Bruno' was written to encourage a boy with cancer. It offers an honesty that children can recognize and appreciate. Visit the Photo Place

Books help children understand cancer

Books encourage children who have cancer or know someone fighting it

Date published: 5/16/2006

WHEN ANDREW Bridge was 3, he was diagnosed with Wilms' tumor, a malignant growth in the kidney. His mother took pictures and wrote down Andrew's comments as he endured surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. When he was 9 they wrote and published a book, "Andrew's Story," about his experience.

"When I was little, I got cancer and was very sick. But if you could see me now, you would never know it," he begins. He describes his symptoms, what he understood about the disease when he was only 3 and, most of all, the stresses of treatment.

The six months of chemotherapy were worse than the surgery and radiation, and he often got angry at the doctors and nurses who were helping him. But he came through in the end--"My doctors and nurses gave me a T-shirt that said 'Finish Line'"-- and is healthy today.

Photos of Andrew, his family, and the doctors and nurses give the book a scrapbook feel. His story can reassure children who are facing cancer treatment, as well as their friends and siblings.

Alice Trillin survived lung cancer as a young woman, and a few years later she wrote a letter to a friend's 12-year-old son who was undergoing cancer treatment. "Dear Bruno," illustrated by Edward Koren, is a book that will reassure other young patients--not because it's upbeat, but because it's honest.

She writes about the fear, the pain, and the sheer exasperation she sometimes experienced: "The thing I hated about the tests was all the time you have to spend in the hall waiting to have them."

She also writes about how having cancer, although a bad experience in so many ways, has made her a different person, "different in ways that I like."

Her respect for the young recipient of her letter shines through on every page of this brief, perceptive book.

Louise Borden writes about a favorite teacher who survives cancer in "Good Luck, Mrs. K!" Third-grader Ann loves her new teacher, who assures the students that they are all teachers as well as students, admonishes them to be good listeners and to "read, read, read."

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Date published: 5/16/2006