On Divorce: An Open Family Book for Parents and Children Together

Author: Sara Bonnett Stein
Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce
Year of Publication: 1979
Publisher & Location: Walker and Company New york
ISBN#:0-8027-7226-9
Target Age Level: Elementary
# of Pages: 47
Quality of Illustrations: Old Photographs
Brief Summary: This book has two stories in one. a more adult one for parent to read about what they should tell their children and a younger geared story that explains how the children feel.
Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children:
This is very old and out of print, alot of the information is still relevent however and can be of some use even today.

Activity:
This book is designed to be read with the parent not a teacher so I might have the child read this book with the parents at home and then we could do a reaction session at the school to see how they felt.

It's Not Your Fault, Koko Bear

Author: Vicky Lansky

Type or emotional/crisis issue addressed: divorce
Year of Publication: 1997
Publisher and Location: The Book Peddlers
# SBN-10: 0916773477
# ISBN-13: 978-0916773472
Target Age Level: Ages 4-8 Kindergarden, Lower Elementary
# of Pages: 32
Quality of Illustrations: Very Good
Brief Summary: t's Not Your Fault, Koko Bear is a picture book designed to be read by parents to their children. Koko Bear's parents are getting a divorce, and Koko, a preschool-aged unisex bear, isn't happy about it. "I don't like this divorce. I don't want two homes," Koko says. Koko Bear's story doesn't minimize kids' pain, but it doesn't wallow in it either.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children:
The message is positive: children are reassured that their feelings are natural, that their parents still love and will care for them, and that the divorce is not their fault. At the bottom of each page, there are bullet points for parents that give information and advice about what the kids are going through, and the best way to handle each issue as it arises.
Activity: read out loud to children.

Buttermilk Hill

Author: Ruth White

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce

Year of Publication: 2004

Publisher & Location: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

ISBN#: 0374351120

Target Age Level: Jr. High, High School

# of Pages: 168

Quality of Illustrations: None

Brief Summary: When Piper’s parents divorce and gradually begin to make new lives for themselves she finds all the changes difficult, but in time she starts to find her own way. She copes through a lot of the changes through writing poetry.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children:Her parents are often triangulating her. It seems a very typical situation of divorce that many young teenagers would be able to relate to.

Activity: Have the child try to write poetry to express their feelings and challenges in coping with the divorce.

My Family's Changing

Author: Pat Thomas

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce

Year of Publication: 1999

Publisher & Location: Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Hauppauge, NY
ISBN#: 0764109952

Target Age Level: Lower Elementary

# of Pages: 29

Quality of Illustrations: Good

Brief Summary: This book takes on the viewpoint of a young boy in a family where they parents have decided to divorce. It discusses ways the parents have handled the divorce before, during, and after the divorce. They young boy notices changes but the book is good at pointing out that the divorce is not his fault.
Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children This is an excellent book to discuss the meaning of divorce and the emotions a child has when a divorce ocurrs in a family. There are question throughout the book to use for dicussions with a child. At the end of the book there also is a glossary

The Divorce Express

Title: The Divorce Express

Author: Paula Danziger

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce, parent-child relationships

Year of Publication: 2007 (reprint)

Publisher & Location: Penguin Young Readers Group

ISBN#: 9780142407127

Target Age Level: Upper Elementary, Junior High

# of Pages: 148

Quality of Illustrations: none

Brief Summary: Phoebe’s parents have recently been divorced. That means she now needs to ride “the divorce express”, a bus form the suburbs to the New York City. This book follows Phoebe’s thoughts and emotions as she tries to understand and deal with the separation of her parents and the resultant changes in her life.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book: This book is well written and talks about real life situations involving parental separation and divorce. Parents of some children may not want their children to read this book.

Post Reading Activities: Have students compare and contract the similarities and differences between Phoebe’s parents divorce and the child’s parents divorce. You may also want to select some passages that describe Phoebe’s emotions and then have the child describe how their emotions are similar or different.

Mama and Daddy Bear’s Divorce

Author/Authors: Cornelia Maude Spelman

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: DIVORCE

Year of Publication: 1998

Publisher & Location: Albert Whitman & Company, Morton Grove, IL

ISBN #: 0-8075-5221-6

Target Age Level: Pre-school

# of Pages: 24

Quality of Illustrations: Good colorful watercolor illustrations.

Brief Summary: This is a basic book about divorce. A young bear learns two important things as her family get divorced. The first one is that some things stay the same even when there is a divorce. She can still go for walks with dad and make bread with mom. She will still have birthday parties and she can still sleep with her Bunny’s ear next to her cheek no matter whose house she is at. The second thing is that the divorce is not her fault.

Post reading activity:
Help the child make a list of things that he or she does with each parent on two separate sheets of paper. For young children you may want to draw pictures. You may then want to use puppets to act out doing activities at different parents homes. The use of the puppets may also be a good way for the child to feel it is safe to say how the “puppet” feels about divorce.

Mama and Daddy Bear's Divorce

Type of emotional/crisis issues addressed: DIVORCE
Author/authors: Cornelia Maude Spelman; Illustrated by Kathy Parkinson

Year of Publication: 1998

Book Title: Mama and Daddy Bear’s Divorce

ISBN #: 0807552216 & 9780807552216

Age Level: PreK; Lower Elementary

# of pages: 20

Quality of illustrations: Very nice illustrations, clear with matted colors and creative brushstrokes.

Brief Summary: A little bear named Dinah has a set number of things that she enjoys in her life and then one of those things gets taken away, her dad. She gets to keep all of the things that make her happy, however, they are not in the same place at the same time as they once were. She feels sad about this and cries, but her mother and father constantly reassure her that even though things are different, one thing that will never be different is how much they love her.

Post reading activity: Have the children discuss what they felt when their parent(s) moved away and tie these emotions with Dinah’s emotions. Explain and reiterate how Dinah’s parents still loved her the same and explain how divorce doesn’t have to be something where you “loose” anything

Fred Stays with Me!

Author: Nancy Coffelt

Illustrator: Tricia Tusa

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce

Year of Publication: 2007

Publisher & Location: New York: Little, Brown, & Co.

ISBN#: 9780316882699

Target Age Level:

# of Pages: 32

Quality of Illustrations: Good, except not much color

Brief Summary: A child describes how she lives sometimes with her mother and sometimes with her father, but her dog is her constant companion.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children: A simple story, good for young children. Good lesson about maintaining some constants for children in shared custody situations.

Activity: Discuss with children what is different about living with mom and living with dad, such as what's different in the bedrooms, activities they enjoy with each parent, etc. Talk about what is the same.

Being Bindy

Author: Alyssa Brugman

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Friendship, Divorce, Bullying

Year of Publication: 2006

Publisher & Location: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

ISBN#: 0385732945

Target Age Level: Jr. High, High School

# of Pages: 208

Quality of Illustrations: None

Brief Summary: Set in Australia. Bindy is in 8th grade. Janey, her best friend growing up, has decided that Bindy isn’t cool enough anymore. Janey ditches her for a new “cooler friend”. Janey’s new friends dress provocatively, smoke pot, and are very mean. Janey humiliates Bindy a few times, and it very mean and hurtful.
Bindy’s parents are divorced. Bindy struggles with her relationship with her mother. Bindy’s father starts to date Janey’s mother which puts further strain on Bindy and Janey’s relationship. Bindy does have a support system of her father, brother, and two new friends.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children: There is some vocabulary and references that may not be understood due to it being written by an Australian author.

Activity: Discuss the struggles Bindy has when her "best friend" changes. (It's a very typical experience for teen age girls.) The student could identify the feelings that Bindy is experiencing and relate it to their own experiences.

At Daddy's on Saturdays

Author: Linda Walvoord Girard

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce

Year of Publication: 1987

Publisher & Location: Albert Whitman & Company: Niles, Illinois

ISBN#: 0-8075-0475-0

Target Age Level: Lower Elementary

# of Pages: 32

Quality of Illustrations: Each set of pages has an illustration that depicts the words on the page. Not very colorful, and a little dated, but the illustrations portray the emotions of the characters well.
Brief Summary: Although her parents' divorce causes her to feel anger, concern, and sadness, Katie discovers that she can keep a loving relationship with her father even though he lives apart from her.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children: This book portrays the father/daughter relationship nicely. The girl lives with her mother but spends her weekends with her dad. The parents in the book did a good job explaining why they were getting divorced but that it did not change how they felt about her. May be difficult reading to children of divorced parents whose fathers are not an active part of their lives.

Activities:

1. Using a poster or paper that portrays a variety of emotions, have the students identify which emotions Katie is feeling after each day, and compare it to how they felt.
   
2. All together, make lists of what things changed for Katie and what things stayed the same. Have the kids make their own lists.

Two Old Potatoes and Me

Author: John Coy

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Divorce

Year of Publication: 2009

Publisher & Location: Alfred A. Knopf, New York

ISBN#: 978-0040417903

Target Age Level: Lower Elementary

# of Pages: 31

Quality of Illustrations: Unique, colorful illustrations, but the text is integrated with the illustrations and gets too busy and confusing at times.

Brief Summary: A girl finds two old potatoes in a cupboard at her father's house. They plant the potatoes in the spring, care for them, and reap a full harvest in September. The girl's parents are divorced, and while this is mentioned, the focus of the book is on the girl and her father's relationship and the creation of a new tradition.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children: This book portrays the father/daughter relationship nicely. The girl lives with her mother but spends her weekends with her dad. I liked the metaphor of good things coming from something that at first seems bad.

Activities:

1. Have children share a tradition they share with their mother or father. They can bring an object from home that represents the tradition and can share with the class.
   
2. Print off pictures of a potato. Have students cut out the pictures. On one side of the potato have children write the hard things about their parents getting divorced. On the other side write the things that may turn out okay or for the better. Share as a group.

My Brother's Keeper

Author: Patricia McCormick

Type or emotional/crisis issue(s) addressed: Drugs, Divorce, Family Relationships

Year of Publication: 2005

Publisher & Location: Hyperion Books

ISBN#: 0-7868-5173-2

Target Age Level: Junior High, High School

# of Pages: 187

Quality of Illustrations: None

Brief Summary: Toby is thirteen and his family is unraveling. His father left and they had to move to an apartment. His mother is battling depression. His brother, Jake, is starting to use drugs and alcohol. Toby tries to keep is family together and doesn't want to alarm his mother. He makes excuses for Jake, cleans up after him, and doesn't tell his mom that he knows Jake is using drugs. He also hides bills from his mother to try to alleviate her financial stress. As Toby continues to try to keep the family together, things continue to unravel. Jake's behavior becomes more and more dangerous and he is eventually arrested. Everything comes out and his mother decides to start focusing on her family again.

Personal Comments/Biases, and/or Things to Consider When Using This Book With Children:

It's written from Toby's perspective. He relates his thoughts as he's trying to restore normalcy to his home. It does talk about a human sexuality class that Toby has to attend, however nothing explicit is discussed. Mostly it talks about Toby's embarrassment of having to be there.