Janice Cohn

Looking out her bedroom window at the rosebush in her backyard, Molly thought back to the day, earlier in the year, when she came home from school to find that her father was (atypically) already there, and that her mother was upstairs resting. Her parents gently explained to her that the baby they had all been expecting was too weak to be born, and that she wasn't going to become (at least for now) an older sister. Molly's parents gently answered her questions - why had this happened? where did the baby go? would they ever have a new baby? - and the next day her grandmother arrived for a visit, providing another adult with whom Molly could talk things through. Eventually, as a means to make her mother feel better, Molly and her grandmother hit upon the idea of planting a rosebush...

After recently reading Evelyne Fournier's Mama Bird Lost an Egg, a French-Canadian picture-book that somewhat unsuccessfully addresses the experience of miscarriage, I went looking for other children's books which discuss this topic. They are few and far between, which I think is a shame, given that many children must have had this experience in their own families, and must surely have feelings about the matter. I have read and enjoyed one other book - The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate - from author Janice Cohn, so I was curious to see what she would do with this story. Cohn is a psychotherapist with many years experience treating child patients, and her four-page introduction for parents will prove very helpful, I would imagine. She makes the point that children's reactions will vary, and that they should be allowed to set the pace, when it comes to sharing or not sharing their feelings. She also points out that children who had ambivalent or negative feelings about getting a new sibling - a theme often explored in the world of picture-books - may feel guilty, as if their feelings somehow contributed to the miscarriage. This particularly struck me, as it is something that also occurred to me, in relation to this topic. The story itself here is gentle and engaging, and while it might not capture every child's reaction to such a loss in the family, it does highlight that it is natural to have deep feelings about the subject. The accompanying artwork from illustrator Gail Owens, whose work I know from such titles as Sydney Taylor's Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family, was lovely. Although this is not a book I would recommend to a wide readership, given its topic, it is one that I think could be helpful, for those readers seeking children's stories addressing miscarriage and its emotional aftermath in a family.… (altro)