When Sara Olsher was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 34, her first thought was how to tell her six-year-old daughter without scaring her. As it turned out, explaining cancer was only the beginning. Treatment is long and causes a lot of ongoing changes in the family—all of which can be confusing, scary, and isolating for kids.
Join Mia and her stuffed giraffe Stuart as they explain the science of cancer and how a loved one's diagnosis and treatment affects a kid's day-to-day life. What Happens When Someone I Love Has Cancer? uses bright and fun illustrations to show how cells can turn into cancer, and helps reduce confusion about how cancer treatment affects a person and the kids in their lives.
Aimed at families with kids ages 4 to 10, What Happens When Someone I Love Has Cancer? is the perfect book for families that want to explain what cancer actually is and how it affects a kid's life, and applies to mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, and many types of cancer, including breast cancer, colon cancer, blood cancers such as leukemia, and bone cancers. Updated second edition (published in 2021) leaves room for conversations about Stage IV or metastatic cancer that doesn't go away, without directly approaching death.
What Happens When Someone I Love Has Cancer? helps families that want to reduce their kids' anxiety surrounding a scary diagnosis. It aims to empower kids with knowledge, which is proven to help kids through traumatic situations.
Also available in Spanish, and can be ordered in bulk (with a visual calendar) from the publisher.
Open, Honest, and Accessible Language: Kids are way smarter than many adults give them credit for, and they can handle learning the truth about most any situation — as long as it’s presented in a way that makes sense to them. No matter the topic, we can remove fear from the equation by discussing hard things in an age-appropriate way and infusing it with language and illustrations that put kids at ease.
Applies to All Types of Cancers: What Happens When Someone I Love Has Cancer explains the science of cancer, and can apply to all types of cancers, such as solid tumors like breast cancer, colon cancer, bone cancer and brain tumors, or blood cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma.
How Cancer Treatment Will Affect a Child: From a developmental perspective, kids experience life as if the whole world revolves around them. They need to understand that cancer isn’t their fault, that it’s not contagious, and that it’s not their job to fix it. But beyond that, kids want reassurance. Who will pick them up from school? How will playtime happen? Are all these emotions okay to have?
Validation of Feelings: Cancer treatment brings up a whole host of emotions. By shining a light on them, this book validates kids’ experiences and feelings, reassuring them that their emotions are normal and encouraging them to share with a trusted grown-up.
Resource for Caregivers: When there’s no resource to make hard conversations easier, grown-ups are far less likely to have the conversation. This book serves as a method to make conversations about cancer easier, so adults feel comfortable using the word cancer and knowing that their kids will feel empowered, rather than terrified. There’s also a coupon in the back of the book for a free guide to having the conversation and supporting kids ongoing.
Therapeutic and Educational Tool: Used in children’s hospitals across the globe and distributed by numerous nonprofits, What Happens When Someone I Love Has Cancer is a go-to book in schools, counseling settings, and support groups. There are no references to God or the afterlife, leaving room for families to have discussions based on their own belief system.
