Part of ME Died, Too: Stories of Creative Survival among Bereaved Children and Teenagers

A moving and eloquent chronicle of eleven children, ranging from toddlers to teenagers, who have lost family or friends shows how drawing, music, and other rituals can help the grieving process, offering creative strategies for dealing with loss.

Grade 5 Up?In this sensitive and informative presentation, a hospice artist and counselor uses examples from her work with children, ages 18 months and up, to teach about the healing process. Fry's focus is on loss due to death, but the healing methods described could also be applied to divorce or adandonment. Through 11 true accounts, readers see how young people face the deaths of pets, parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends caused by long-term illness as well as by accident, murder, and suicide. As the author presents the stories, she explains how the children dealt with their grief and often interprets the artwork they did at the time. These black-and-white drawings appear beside appropriate text. Each chapter ends with practical suggestions for readers' self-help in overcoming or facing such a trauma and with an annotated recommendation of an age-appropriate book or two. An epilogue brings readers up to date on the progress of each person. A useful book that illustrates methods of separating facts from emotional responses and suggests ways to bring out and deal with those emotions.?Dona Weisman, Northeast Texas Library System, Garland
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although the author directly addresses young readers, this unusually perceptive and sensitive book can be shelved with confidence alongside adult titles about bereavement and death. Fry, an artist and bereavement counselor at a hospice in Vermont, presents 10 graceful studies of children and teenagers in mourning, progressing from the experience of a toddler preoccupied and puzzled by the death of a family dog, to a 13-year-old girl's reactions to the accidental death of her mother, to the complex situation of a girl who protected herself and her small brother as her father killed first her mother, then himself. Fry's compassion and her admiration of her young subjects shine through the sadness of these accounts; to each of the 10 chapters she appends a short list of "creative survival strategies" that outline journal exercises and other projects to help channel grief. An epilogue visits each of the mourners some years after their losses, thus implicitly demonstrating to the reader that sorrow can indeed be surmounted. Adults will find much of interest in Fry's discussions of the particularities of children's responses to death; young mourners and their peers will be moved and fortified by Fry's thoughtfulness and honesty. Illustrated with drawings by bereaved children. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 5-8. This is an extremely difficult book to read because it's such a vivid catalog of pain. But Fry, a bereavement counselor, aims to do more than tell harrowing stories. She also wants to get young people to use their creative talents to ease their emotional turmoil: each of the 11 real-life stories she includes is followed by a selection of reasonable self-help activities--make a trouble doll, stitch a memory quilt, etc. The narratives, from young people ranging in age from toddler to teen, encompass a wide variety of situations. In one, a little boy deals with the death of a pet; in another, a little girl recounts the horrific murder-suicide of her parents. The accounts show the importance of professional counseling as well as the value of helping oneself. Unfortunately, the audience for this book is not clear-cut. The text may be too difficult and the situations too stark for some elementary or middle-school children (to whom many of Fry's self-help activities seem directed), and the chapter readings (presented with no publication information) aren't always age appropriate. For example, Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, an adult book, is suggested reading at the end of the story about a preschool child. Still, Fry captures the cruel legacy of loss while providing a firm statement that, with time and work, the pain will eventually ease. Illustrated with original artwork by kids. Stephanie Zvirin