Customer Reviews

Ellen's Book of Life (Ellen Fremedon)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While at the library with my 10 year old daughter, we were looking ahead to summer reading and I suggested that this book looked interesting. I had read the back cover but not the inside dust jacket info. We got into the car and she was anxious to begin reading the book while we waited for her brother's baseball practice to end... She knew right away it was not a good fit for her because her mother (me) has MS like Ellen's mother in the book, and seeing that the book dealt with Ellen's mother's death from the disease was an automatic NO WAY for my daughter. I had not read through any part of carefully and I was suddenly kicking myself in disbelief that of all books in the library I randomly chose this one...
Thank goodness she read the inside cover before beginning. The concepts and emotion would have been way too much for her to handle with our own family's newness to life with a Mommy with MS.
Even if she didn't have a mother suffering the same debilitating disease this book and its severe issues (adoption, sickness,and death) are too much in one place. The author was on a role with having it be about a child deals with a parents sickness. Describing how it can alter and negatively affect their day to day lives and perspective, but having the mother die right away and then delving into the adoptive mother issue is just simply too much to handle for anyone.
I do think that the main characters vivid emotions and reactions to her mother's death are clear and true to the real emotions of anyone grieving the loss of a loved one (especially a preteen child) and I think all parents going through a terrible loss with their children would benefit from reading these parts ofthis book so that they could gain perspective into the thought process of theiri child and be able to see it from their angle.