RESOURCES

Featured Recommendation:

Title: Michael Rosen's Sad Book

This book is about grief, bereavement, sadness and loss. It chronicles Michael's grief at the death of his son Eddie from meningitis at the age of 19. A moving combination of sincerity and simplicity, it acknowledges that sadness is not always avoidable or reasonable and perfects the art of making complicated feelings plain.

“Some people reading this may have read about Eddie when he was a little boy. He turns up in Quick Let's Get Out Of Here and You Wait Till I'm Older Than You. Well, now he turns up in The Sad Book. I think Quentin Blake's pictures are absolutely amazing and wonderful and I'm a lucky person to have worked with someone who could imagine what's in my mind. I hope that it'll be a book that anyone who's been sad about anything at all will help them find out what they're thinking about and why they're thinking it. .”

Extract from Michael Rosen's website, http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/sadbook.html .

3Di commentary: There are some truly remarkable children's books and there are others that are exceptional. Michael Rosen's Sad Book is certainly exceptional. Tackling sensitive issues with children and young people can be a challenge. Having a book like this to read with them makes an extremely difficult subject so much easier. It enables every reader, child or adult, to understand the incongruencies of grief and sadness. It allows us to empathise and come to terms with our own feelings. As the author says, it will help to identify "what they're thinking about and why they're thinking it".
This is a wonderful book and demonstrates how intelligences harmonise together in order that we can grow and live with even the most deblitating of emotions and feelings.