Let's face it, cancer sucks. This book provides real-life advice from real-life teens designed to help teens live with a parent who is fighting cancer. One million American teenagers live with a parent who is fighting cancer. It's a hard blow for those already navigating high school, preparing for college, and becoming increasingly independent. Author Maya Silver was 15 when her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. She and her dad, Marc, have combined their family's personal experience with advice from dozens of medical professionals and real stories from 100 teens—all going through the same thing Maya did. The topic of cancer can be difficult to approach, but in a highly designed, engaging style, this book gives practical guidance that includes: How to talk about the diagnosis (and what does diagnosis even mean, anyway?) The best outlets for stress (punching a wall is not a great one, but should it happen, there are instructions for a patch job) How to deal with friends (especially one the ones with 'pity eyes') Whether to tell the teachers and guidance counselors and what they should know (how not to get embarrassed in class) What happens in a therapy session and how to find a support group if you want one A special section for parents also gives tips on strategies for sharing the news and explaining cancer to a child, making sure your child doesn't become the parent, what to do if the outlook is grim, and tips for how to live life after cancer. My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks allows teens to see that they are not alone. That no matter how rough things get, they will get through this difficult time. That everything they're feeling is ok. Essays from Gilda Radner's "Gilda's Club" annual contest are an especially poignant and moving testimony of how other teens dealt with their family's situation. Praise for My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks: "Wisely crafted into a wonderfully warm, engaging and informative book that reads like a chat with a group of friends with helpful advice from the experts." —Paula K. Rauch MD, Director of the Marjorie E. Korff Parenting At a Challenging Time Program "A must read for parents, kids, teachers and medical staff who know anyone with cancer. You will learn something on every page." —Anna Gottlieb, MPA, Founder and CEO Gilda's Club Seattle "This book is a 'must have' for oncologists, cancer treatment centers and families with teenagers." —Kathleen McCue, MA, LSW, CCLS, Director of the Children's Program at The Gathering Place, Cleveland, OH "My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks provides a much-needed toolkit for teens coping with a parent's cancer." —Jane Saccaro, CEO of Camp Kesem, a camp for children who have a parent with cancer

Few things affect a family’s everyday life like the presence of an illness like cancer. Whether it’s a grandparent, another family member, a teacher or neighbor or friend, children especially experience confusion, fear and misunderstanding. This book will help kids cope with the presence of cancer in their lives. Book includes 14 wonderful, full-color, full-page illustrations, and some 40 helpful pointers written expressly for children 4-12. A rare and excellent resource!

A healing conversation between.grandmother and granddaughter ..In this beautifully written and illustrated book, a grandmother.who has survived cancer answers the many.questions of her concerned granddaughter, Tess. .

Offering supportive, practical advice from a leading child-life specialist, this book includes information such as what to tell a child about the illness, how to recognize early-warning signs in a child's drawings, sleep patterns, schoolwork and eating habits, and when and where to get professional help. Illustrations & Calvin & Hobbes cartoons.

As a successful, loving father, Neil Russell had to deal with one of the most difficult and important responsibilities he had ever faced as a parent: speaking to his children about his cancer. Diagnosed at age 47 when his children were only 11 and 13, this is Neil's emotional account of the disease's life-changing impact on himself and his family. Can I Still Kiss You? is both informative narrative and interactive journal; it will help parents speak to their children about the cancer that has come into their lives. The prospect of sitting down with a child in an attempt to make sense out of a disease that we barely understand ourselves is daunting. Russell provides a chapter-by-chapter series of questions and answers dealing with diagnosis, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy during and after treatment. Through his own experience and research he presents clear, straightforward questions followed by answers that are understandable to children. Additional space encourages parents to add personal responses to children and children to write back expressing fears, concerns or encouragement-in essence, a "message board" for sharing emotions that are difficult to articulate. Some of the questions he addresses are: What is cancer?, When I get older will I get cancer because you did?, and Can I still kiss you? This insightful book ends with a warm and powerful essay written by Neil's son, Trevor. Can I Still Kiss You? reveals the remarkable inner strength and courage of a family dealing with a parent in need.

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms 'the ideological regime of cancer,' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself." —Sally Rooney, author of Normal People "Anne Boyer’s radically unsentimental account of cancer and the 'carcinogenosphere' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique." —Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others. A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious. Includes black-and-white illustrations

Butterfly Kisses and Wishes on Wings is a listen-to or read-along book for children. It is a resource that can be give as a gift and used to educate and support any child who is facing the cancer of a loved one. The story line, as told through the eyes of a child, lends itself to a simple and clear understanding of cancer. Most important, however, is the lesson that teaches children to realize the power they have to be an active and integral part of a loved one's cancer journey.