By Mary Brent, Caitlin Knutsson
A picture book that walks a child through their own leukemia treatment, with the chemo drawn as a superhero showing up to help.
A boy named Kyle has leukemia, and the book follows what that means for him day to day. The trips to the clinic. The port in his chest and what it's there for. The medicine that goes in through it, and the days it leaves him feeling awful. The move that holds the whole thing together is that the chemo is drawn as a superhero, something that shows up to fight for Kyle instead of something being done to him. It doesn't pretend any of the treatment is fun. It ends with Kyle looking ahead to the day he'll get to say he made it through.
It was made by a mother whose five-year-old daughter was diagnosed, and the two of them put it together, which is why it carries the small true details a picture book usually leaves out: what a port is, why it gets accessed, why the same medicine that's helping is also the one that makes you feel awful. That last part is the knot a lot of children get stuck on, and this book works it loose. It's self-published and it shows. The art is plain and the rhythm isn't polished. What you get in return is your child seeing their own week laid out on a page, with a reason attached to each hard part of it.