Customer Reviews

Megan's Two Houses: A Story of Adjustment

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This is an extremely negative book. It is told from the eight-year-old girl's point of view, and is just very disturbing. Instead of pointing out any positive things about divorce at all until the last page (you can have hugs from four adults instead of just two and you get more Christmas presents) it focuses entirely on the negative situations, which, though one would expect a generalized notion, are actually rather specific to certain relationships. Not every divorce involves nannies and the parents' subsequent lovers. How many kids would have learned that one of their nannies ran off with her lesbian yoga instructor? The girl comes across as very spoiled, selfish, and rude. She's taught to give people degrading nicknames, such as Mrs. Valium (whom she likes because she doesn't care what Mrs. Valium calls her as long as she calls her when she has chocolate), she clearly finds it okay to tell people she hates them, and she plots throughout the book for ways to get her parents back together. The plots include telling her dad's girlfriend that he'll never marry her (your ultimate goal must be marriage! seems to be the message here) and her mom's boyfriend that her mom will marry him if he doesn't watch out (giving the distinctly opposite message that marriage is a bad thing!) and calling her dad and telling him that there's a strange man in her mom's bed, hopefully causing him to barge over with lots of police.

If you're looking for a book that helps kids understand the positive things that can come from divorce, this is NOT the book you're looking for. Another picture book that is much simpler, shorter, and positive is Two Houses by Claire Masurel.