Love, Amalia

When I was a kid my father died so I can identify with the main character in Love, Amalia by Alma Flor Ada and Gabriel M. Zubizarreta. When her best friend moves away and the grandmother she relies on for comfort dies soon afterwards Amalia is devastated.

This book portrays the extended family interactions and Latino culture well and readers will pick up some Spanish vocabulary by reading it. The loving relationship between Amalia and her grandmother is shown in many ways throughout the book.

But the most important thing Love, Amalia has to offer is the way the girl learns to cope with her grief.

I recommend this book highly for any kid who must deal with the loss of a loved one.

While many young readers are not girls and may not have support from nearby family like she does, anyone who has suffered the death of someone they care about will be able to identify with the main character's emotions and doing so should help them cope with their own feelings.

The book will also help kids understand any of their friends who are experiencing grief.

The few questions at the end would be useful for group or family discussions or to answer in school, and the two recipes look delicious.

Many children will benefit from reading this book.

Grief in Children

When I was six years old my father died of polio and, of course, I grieved for him. About eight months later I read Black Beauty (yes, my reading level was advanced for my age) and cried for hours because the horse in the book died. The adults didn't understand and I didn't realize it myself, but I was actually grieving for my father. It had taken a long time for me to really understand emotionally that his death was permanent and my life had been changed forever.

Decades later I was teaching preschool and asked the kids in my pre-K class what they wanted to be when they grew up. One little girl said she wanted to be God, and when I explained that was impossible she began to cry desperately hard. She sobbed for so long we had to call her mother to come get her. It turned out that child was actually grieving for her father, who had died many months earlier. She had planned to become God someday so she could make sure nobody else's father ever died, and maybe get her own father back.

Apparently it's normal for children suddenly to be hit by strong grief a long time after the losses they experience. This is a healthy thing for them, and part of the healing process. Perhaps reading a book about death to a child, or encouraging them to read one themselves, at least six months after a death in their family happens would help them recover from the tragedy.