Why Kids Need to Read the Tough Stuff

"You know the thing about magic, Charlie? We can wish on clovers and shooting stars and ice flowers all we want. But in the end, the only real magic is what's inside us and the people we love. Some things are beyond even that magic."

On this unusually quiet and uneventful Saturday afternoon, I have just finished the last pages of Kate Messner's newest book The Seventh Wish. This is a book that has been on my radar for months, and I am finding it hard to put into words the plethora of emotions I am feeling as I close it.

Back in June, I heard reports that a librarian had rescinded her invitation for Kate Messner to speak to students at her school. You can read Messner's blog post about it here.  I find it completely unfathomable that anyone would keep this book out of the hands of children. In fact, children are the ones that NEED to read it.

The Seventh Wish is about Charlie, a typical middle-school-aged girl who has a close family and loves Irish dancing. One day, Charlie goes ice fishing with her neighbor and his grandmother, where she catches a quite unusual fish - one with emerald eyes who offers to grant her a wish if she throws him back. Not believing what is happening, Charlie makes a wish to see if there is any truth to it.  Her wish comes true, but not necessarily the way she had hoped. She continues going back to the same fishing spot and makes more wishes, all of which come true but in convoluted ways. Just when she starts to think that maybe her wishes are causing more trouble than good, Charlie's sister Abby has some complications in her own life and starts down a path that Charlie struggles to understand. Charlie quickly finds out that all the wishes in the world can't change what is happening to her sister and her family.

In the midst of a story about friendship, family, and usual middle grade worries, Messner has expertly and tastefully written about addiction in a way that is both relevant and appropriate for upper elementary to middle grade readers. She has included all of the typical tween worries - friends, boys, extracurricular activities, family - with a touch of magic that creates a scenario that is just the tiniest bit outside the realm of possibility to make it feel real. The way in which she handles the topic of addiction is both realistic and gentle, yet it is not the sole focus of the book that runs deep with other themes.

According to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, one in ten Americans is addicted to alcohol and drugs.  The children sitting in our classrooms have probably encountered someone with an addiction at some point in their lives, and if they haven't, they probably will.  What better way to help them understand and process this very real sickness than through literature? Addiction is real.  It affects everyone involved, and it will for a lifetime. There are children that sit in my classroom every day that I know need to read this book.  There are children all across the country that need to read this book.  They need  to hear these words, over and over:

"'There's nothing you can do when someone you love is an addict. So you just...' She shrugs. 'You keep living. And do other stuff.'"

I wish this book had been around when I was in middle school.  I wish I had had a teacher that handed it to me, urging me to read it so I could feel a little less alone. Growing up with someone who has an addiction is draining.  It is so hard for children to understand, and sometimes it seems like life is full of one broken promise after another. Charlie and Abby's story on the pages of this book was so heartfelt and real, I found myself tearing up with recognition of all of the emotions they were feeling.

Toward the end of the book, Abby describes addiction in a way that is so straightforward and true, defining it in a way that is often extremely difficult for children or those outside the addiction to even begin to understand:

"That's the whole thing with addiction, Charlie. And it's the worst thing in the whole world. Knowing that you want to promise and never, ever hurt the people you love again. And knowing that the addiction is bigger than you, bigger than love, bigger than everything. If I made that promise, I'd be lying. And I'm not going to do that."

Who are we, as adults, to deny children the opportunity to read a book because it deals with an issue that is mature, yet very real in their lives? We can never tell which book will be the one that changes a child's life. Books that are relevant to children's lives are the ones to which they need access. They need to read about characters that they can believe in and that can give them hope in some of life's most difficult situations.

The Seventh Wish spoke to my heart, and I wholeheartedly believe that it belongs on classroom and library shelves everywhere. Children need to read about tough subjects. Adults may feel uncomfortable discussing them with children, but isn't it better to provide children with a safe place for them to glean understanding and feel less alone? Children often experience these tough subjects in their everyday lives, and by censoring the books that explore them so eloquently, we are robbing them of feelings of connection and humanity. Children need to know that they are not alone in their experiences, especially when they are at such a critical age of development. While every book may not be right for every child, books such as this one are right for many children, and they deserve to be on our shelves so those children can discover them.

Loving, Losing, and Living

It's amazing to me that life still goes on after losing someone you love.  You spend your life loving them, looking up to them, relying on their voice to be on the other end of the phone, and then, just like that, they are gone. The world keeps spinning, regardless of your attempts to slow it down. Other people are unaware of the significance of a certain date, of the emotional punch it carries for you. Yet it happens - the sun rises on a new day, one that is missing a piece of the one before it, and somehow you keep going. You learn to look for meaning and find significance in things that give you hope.

May 6, 2013 is the last time my dad ever told me he loved me. When my sister went home to get some much needed rest, I was suddenly in charge of making one of the most critical decisions of my dad's life in a frantic rush to get him into emergency surgery. After weeks, months even, of trying to figure out why he was so sick, doctors knew they had to get inside for answers before his health got even worse. As I went with him to prep for the surgery that I had okayed, he and I both knew that there was a strong possibility he may not survive the surgery. I remember he - the man who was always terrified of being on an operating table - told me he was so tired and wanted to proceed.  I promised I would bring him a Coke as soon as he woke up, something I have remembered every single day for the past three years.

The next five days could be simultaneously described as both a whirlwind and as the longest days of my life.  Looking back, it seems like weeks passed between his surgery and the day that he actually left this world. In reality, it was just five short days, a culmination of months of suffering, as his body, unknown to anyone else - including his doctors - slowly poisoned itself from the inside.

Losing a parent is hard. Even when you can describe your relationship with that parent as tumultuous at times. As much as I always longed for it, my dad and I never had the ideal relationship.  He had his faults, I have mine, and we tended to butt heads on many occasions. People close to me have a hard time understanding why I still tried to be close to my dad, why I picked up the phone after the hurtful words he hurled at me that always left me in tears. They find it hard to believe that I can still shed tears because I  miss him.

Regardless of our problems, he was my dad.  There is no denying the bond between a parent and child. My dad was the one person I always wanted to make proud. While he could indeed be quite truculent at times, he also had a heart of gold.  He would have given the last thing he had to someone in need.  He was one of the most brilliant men I have ever known.  He may have had some strange ways of showing it, but, to quote Edgar Allan Poe, he loved my mom "with a love that was more than love."  He taught me the value of hard work, to always change my oil, and that birthdays and holidays are special occasions. I would be lying if I said I didn't learn some colorful language from him, and I'm sure I got a little bit of his temper too. Many times in my life, I felt like I'd never quite measure up to the kind of daughter he wanted, but deep down somehow I always knew he loved me - and that's what kept me constantly striving for that relationship with him that I always wanted.

It's ironic to me that I ended up alone with him on the morning of his surgery. Of my dad's three daughters, I may not have been the most preferred, but there I was.  He was so scared, but I also got the sense that he was at peace with the decision we made. I got to have a few quiet moments alone with him where we had some very important conversations, which made me feel like I had somehow been placed in that moment for a reason. If nothing else, he was able to see that despite all of the other baggage in our lives, I was beside him, and I really hope that made him proud and feel loved.

In the last few months of his life, my dad unknowingly presented my sisters and me with a gift that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. His gift to us was that the three of us now have a bond that will never be severed. I have no idea how any one of us would have gotten through the months leading up to his passing without the other two.  Whether on the other end of the phone, in a text message, curled up in a hospital chair, we were beside each other every step of the way, and that is something for which I will be eternally grateful.

My dad had quite a sad childhood, which I think influenced many of the decisions he made in his life. I'm not sure that he always felt loved, so he sought love in different ways. When he took his last breaths on May 10, the three of us held his hands and filled that hospital room with an abundance of love.  I sure hope he felt it, as I know we did.

It's always amazing to me how books come into my life at just the right time.  Every time I read something, I can glean new meaning from it. When I was reading aloud the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio for probably the fifth time not long after my dad died, a passage jumped out at me.  Two of the characters in the book were discussing death, and one said,

"I think when people die, their souls go to heaven but just for a little while. Like that’s where they see their old friends and stuff, and kind of catch up on old times. But then I actually think the souls start thinking about their lives on earth, like if they were good or bad or whatever. And then they get born again as brand-new babies in the world."

Camden, my two-year-old daughter, was born on February 10, 2014 - nine months to the day after my dad died. I look at her sometimes and feel so incredibly blessed that she is even here. After a miscarriage and a year of failed attempts to get pregnant, suddenly there she was - after I had lost one of the most important people in my life.   She's smart, funny, sweet, and spunky. I like to think that she is all the good things that my dad always wanted to be in his lifetime. I know there were things in his life that he wished he had done differently. When I look at this little miracle of a child, I see his opportunity to get it right.  Somehow the magical timing of his death and her beginning of existence gives me a peace I never knew I needed.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of my dad. There are many days that I want to pick up the phone to tell him something about my day.  I don't think I will ever stop trying to make him proud.  Every May I will most likely relive the final days of my dad's life, but as the years pass, I am able to look back on that time and feel a sense of purpose.  His struggle was not for nothing. There was meaning behind everything that took place, and that, along with my memories, is what I will carry in my heart. Losing someone is never easy, but the meaning it has brought to my living is what gets me through.