Parents - mislaid, lost, stolen or strayed

Someone once said that the first thing a writer needs to do when writing for children is to lose the adults.

This might be good writing advice.Kids see themselves as capable. They want to read about kids solving problems without a lot of adult interference.

Many current books take this advice literally. The parents are - gone! One parent is dead or ill or missing. The other parent is not as available as he or she should be. The problem of dealing with a missing parent often becomes the problem of dealing with a grieving parent.

Here are two books about lost, missing, dead and disappeared parents that I can't get out of my mind.

When Elephants Fly by Nancy Richardson Fischer. Lily Decker has a plan. She will walk the very straight and narrow path. Her best friend will question her mental health periodically. She will avoid stressors. Then, and only then, she may avoid her mother's fate. When Lily was only 7, her mother tried to kill her and herself. Lily's mother suffered from schizophrenia as had two previous generations of women in her family. 

Lily gets a newspaper internship and in covering a story at the local zoo, she gets between a mother elephant and the baby elephant when the mother threatens her infant. This act is NOT on Lily's approved list of activities. But Lily can't stand by and let the baby elephant, Swifty, suffer.

Sometimes, books written for teens should be read by the parents. Lily's father watches her obsessively for signs of mental stress. Back off, Dad.  Relax. If the worst happens, you need to be a calm place in Lily's life.

Sunny by Jason Reynolds.  Jason Reynolds!  JASON. REYNOLDS.
Sunny runs the mile. He has trained since he was a toddler. He runs the mile and wins. Every. Single. Time. Until the day he stops.

It's hard for him to explain to his dad, Darryl, why he can't run the mile anymore. It's boring. It's too quiet. It's not Sunny. Sunny wants to move with sound and rhythm. Sunny wants a sound track.

Sunny's mother ran the mile. And when she ran, she won. Her memory is why Sunny can't explain that he needs to do something else. Aurelia, Sunny's homeschool tutor, understands. Coach wants to keep Sunny on the track team. But if you don't run, how can you take part in track? Coach finds a way. Darryl learns a lesson in parenting and in sharing his memories of the wife who died too young.
This book is wonderful.



In my next post, I will share two more reviews of books about kids who are missing one or both parents.