Tag: cancer

What is Cancer cover

What is Cancer, Anyway?

Health and Safety 10 comments

What is Cancer, Anyway?: Explaining Cancer to Children of All Ages
Carney
1999

Submitter: This book, designed to help children cope with cancer, is more confusing and just plain weird than anything I’ve seen in a long time. Also, WTF is up with that entity on the cover? It is blonde child with a skin condition? Is it a dog in a wig? Why is it wearing mascara?!

Holly: I don’t find the text in the excerpts pictured below to be particularly child-friendly. The vocabulary is pretty sophisticated. And yeah – weird anthropomorphism. When they’re too human it’s creepy, not cute.

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cancer can it be stopped?

Cancer: Can it be stopped?

Health and Safety 3 comments

Cancer: Can it be Stopped?
Silverstein and Silverstein
1987 (original copyright 1972)

This book seemed to be aimed at a young adult audience, although I found it in the adult nonfiction section of a small public library. The information is no doubt out of date, particularly with respect to  treatments. The tone of these books is bleak and not too optimistic with respect to survival. No one wants a patron facing a desperate medical diagnosis to rely on books this old.

It would be great if everyone would have a lot of time to drop everything and weed whenever. I know that isn’t always the case, however staff can and should prioritize certain collections over others.The changes in some content has very real world consequences for our patrons.

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