Why Are We Getting a Divorce?
Grade 2-4 A lot of angleswhat causes divorce, why people get married, why the child usually lives with the mother, how to enjoy separate families, how parents sufferare covered superficially. The information and informal language are designed to be cozy and comforting, but the end result is sometimes confusing and disturbing. For example, if parents marry because they fall in love and want to be together always and split up because they don't have ``enough love'' or because ``people change'' or because another lover enters the picture, children could assume that their parents may not stick with them either. The suggestion that ``millions and millions and millions'' of divorces occur each year and the laid-back advice to cheer up because ``feeling sorry for yourself is only going to make you more miserable'' and to be helpful because the folks are having problems, too, are not terribly reassuring. Luckily, the cartoony color illustrations caricaturing adults and children are lively, amusing, and sensitive. Dinosaurs Divorce (Little, 1986) by Marc Brown tells it all better in a charming comic strip format. What's Going to Happen to Me? (Four Winds, 1978) by Eda LeShan is more serious but gently understanding and thorough. Patricia Pearl, First Presbyterian School, Martinsville, Va.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.