Sometimes You Just Need a Good Cry

Somewhere around fourth grade, authors and publishers decide that kids no longer need to read happy books.  At about 10 they are ready to deal with death and more emotionally complex characters.  To some extent I agree with them.  Ten-year-olds know what’s going on around them; they are aware of the outside world, but they’re still kids.  I had a student whose step-father was in one of the Twin Towers on 9-11.  I remember scouring the book room for something on his reading level where no one died.  It was a struggle. 

That said, everyone likes a good tear-jerker now and then, but lately it seems that every kids’ novel I read makes me cry.  Take this year’s Newberry Award winner, supposedly the best children’s book published in 2012.  It’s called The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, and it’s about a gorilla and an elephant that are kept in abusive conditions at a roadside mall/circus.  It does have a hopeful ending, and the narration is engaging, because it’s told from the point of view of the gorilla.  I’ve also recently read Home of the Brave, by the same author, about Kek who has recently arrived in Minnesota after surviving a refugee camp in Africa.  He’s waiting and hoping his mother is still alive, while trying to learn a new language, and fit in at his American school.  Both are great books, but they are sad.

If you’re looking for tough to read, but beautiful, we can’t ignore Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine and Wonder by R.J. Palacio.  The first is told from the point of view of a girl with Asperger’s Syndrome.  She’s lost her brother in a school shooting, and she and her father must come to terms with life without him.  As for the latter, most of my librarian friends think Wonder should have won the Newberry this year.  Written in the alternating voices, it’s the story of August who was born with a number of facial birth defects.  In fifth grade, his parents decide he’s well enough to go to real school for the first time.  The story makes it very clear just how mean kids can be.

 

There is a place for sad books in children’s literature.  I still remember reading Little Women in 5^th grade and sobbing when Beth died.  It was the first book I ever cried reading.  Then there are other classics, like Bridge to Terabithia and Tuck Everlasting, and everybody cries at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows.  I have fond memories of all these books, because sometimes you just need a good cry.

Great Tear-Jerkers

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

Wonder by R.J. Palacios

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt      

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith

Word After Word After Word by Patricia MacLachlan

Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner