Coping with Deaths in a Family

Review of the Middle-Grade Novel Worth by Alexandria LaFaye (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, 2004)

This historical novel set in the 1800s poses a challenging question:  how much is a child worth when differently abled or orphaned? Eleven-year-old Nathaniel “Nate” Peale helps his parents Gabriel and Mary Eva to farm their land in Nebraska.  He…
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The Novel mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine Captures the Point of View of a Child with Asperger’s Syndrome

Motivated by her concern after the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, Kathryn Erskine wrote mockingbird (mok′ ing-bûrd) to examine how families cope after a sudden tragedy.  Erksine’s first-person narrator is a ten-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome named Caitlin Ann Smith. …
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