(Part 2) Best marriage & divorce books for children according to redditors

Yes Please by Amy Poehler, performed by Amy P with a little help from her friends. Now this is why I love audiobooks! Amy does a great job narrating this - it doesn't even feel like she is reading text at all, it just feels like she is having a conversation. I'll admit I am biased by being a fan going in, but it was one of my favorite audiobook experiences so far. There are great cameo voices throughout, and the last chapter read in front of a live audience is awesome. It makes it 10X funnier hearing a crowd laugh along to the reading. (Are there any other audiobooks recorded in front of an audience?) As for the actual writing - I really loved the positive message throughout the book, and some passages were unexpectedly deep (why she believes in time travel for example). The SNL and UCB stories were great as well for a long-time fan like me. Coming after Lena Dunham's book and her bored, flat-lined reading, hearing a true performer narrate a book was a breath of fresh air. (I just had to throw one more dig at that Lena Dunham audiobook...)

Hatchet by Paulsen, narrated by Peter Coyote (great name for this book). This is a short one (~3:30) and more for younger readers, but it was still enjoyable. The writing had an interesting style with a lot of short, repetitive phrases. The narrator did a fair job, and I learned that all this time I've been pronouncing cro-magnon wrong.

I have worked with children for the last 15 years (and have one myself), and when I have to discuss difficult subjects with kids, I usually turn to children's literature to help enter or continue discussions. Unfortunately, I don't personally know any good books about (re)marriage, but you maybe could call a chlldren's librarian at public library or even university. Here's what I found on Amazon. Some of the books look great, but I haven't actually read any of them.

There are some great picture books that might help show him the diversity of family structures - try Families, Families, Families!, Who’s in my family?, or The Great Big Book of Families. There are also some good ones about divorce specifically such as Always Mom, Forever Dad or Fred Stays with Me.

This is part of a series and it kind of broke my heart - but they're all good:

https://www.amazon.com/When-Parents-Forgot-Friends-About/dp/0764131729/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1543117725&sr=8-13&keywords=books+about+divorce+for+young+children

Maybe a bit too young for a 10 yo, esp if your child is a girl.

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This is great but only for a good 10 yo reader... just deals with grief and tragedy in childhood well:

https://www.amazon.com/Thing-About-Jellyfish-Ali-Benjamin/dp/0316380849/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1543117858&sr=8-10&keywords=books+about+divorce+for+young+children

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This too. I tried to read it but it broke my heart but it helped my son:

https://www.amazon.com/Things-We-Knew-Catherine-West/dp/0718078101/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1543118051&sr=8-14&keywords=books+about+divorce+for+young+children

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Edit: Mostly kids feel suddenly like things aren't as they should be and the fictionalized version of this in Young Adult (which is where 10 yos often are now, sadly) has a deep and awesome history going back to Judy Bloom.

This reminds me of this book called Donovan's Big Day

It talks about a boy getting ready for his two moms' wedding.

I haven't personally read it, but I heard about it through the illustrator, Mike Dutton, who is a fantastic artist. Heard good things about the content as well though.

My opinion is seemingly in the minority here, so how about this:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/187127/number-of-occupational-injury-deaths-in-the-us-by-gender-since-2003/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_suicide#Gender_and_suicide

https://www.sss.gov (the draft, which is still only requires men to register


What about domestic violence? If a man is being beat by his wife, and he calls the police to report her, he gets removed from the home, especially if there are children in the home. The reasoning is always the same "well she's their the mom" despite that the woman is the one causing the abuse.

Man and a woman get married. Woman decides after seven years she's bored, meets someone new and leaves her husband. No abuse, no cheating, no 'lack of attention' or any of those things, she simply just gets bored and finds someone new. How often to we see and read the accounts that the woman gets the house, for no other reason than, "well he should move out." The stereotypes about men getting divorced and losing everything in it, to include half of their retirement, pets and worse, their children, exist because of how often it happens in western society.

https://www.amazon.com/Weekends-Dad-Parents-Divorce-Challenges/dp/1404866787

You get disturbing books like this then. Why are weekends with Dad the expected outcome of divorce? Why do loving dads have to suffer losing their kids simply because they're not the woman?

Are there situations where the man is a piece of shit, beats/abuses etc? Absolutely, and I'm not trying to say that those situations don't exist. I'm pointing out that, the vast majority of situations involving a divorce, especially when kids are involved that the man gets hosed.

The situation happened to me. I didn't cheat, lie, abuse or otherwise my ex-wife. She simply woke up one day, decided that the attention she was getting from a single dad at our son's soccer practice was better than the 7 years of marriage and 2 kids we had. So guess what? $1500 a month in child support and alimony I pay. Which, if you didn't know, counts as debt for me in my debt/income ratio. Every time I apply for a loan I have to disclose that which has made it extremely difficult to secure a home loan for myself, post divorce. She also gets to claim that child support as income, bolstering her own debt/income to exaggerated levels.

These scenarios happen all the time. Just browse through any of the /r/askreddit or /r/relationships and you'll see it.

Men are also much less likely to report being a victim of sexual assault. Men can and do get raped at an alarming rate, but because the reporting is significantly less, the statistics don't compare to women.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-life-expectancy-lo/

It's not the only barometer of "easier life" but it certainly gives you something to think about. If men have it much easier in life, then why globally are we dying younger than women?

There are a couple of books with this theme - I'm sure there's more

Clay, by Colby Rodowsky

>BookList:
Gr. 4-7. It starts off like a thriller. Why have Elsie, 11, and her younger brother, Tommy, been on the run with Mom for four years, forbidden to talk to anyone and kept home from school? While Mom is at work waiting tables, Elsie must care for Tommy in their locked apartment. She remembers how Mom’s refusal to accept Tommy’s mental illness led to divorce. Dad was awarded custody--until Mom stole the kids one day and took them on the road. Driven to desperation, Elsie finally gets help, but returning home after four years on the run is like being in a time warp. Always at the center is her love for her brother, who turns out to be autistic. He needs her next to him when Mom is dragging them across the country and also when they return to Dad and medical care. Without sentimentality, Rodowsky’s moving story makes vivid the stress of mental illness in a family. Caught up by the suspense, readers will stay for the gripping personal story. (Reviewed May 1, 2001) -- Hazel Rochman

Rules, by Cynthia Lord

>Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the rules from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"---in order to head off David's embarrassing behaviors.
But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a surprising, new sort-of friend, and Kristi, the next-door friend she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?

The House Tibet, by Georgia Savage

>"While it was happening I watched the moon." So begins the disturbing story of a young girl, Vicky, who is raped by her father and rejected by those around her. Fleeing her shattered world, Vicky leads her autistic brother James on a series of wild misadventures before finding peace with a compassionate old man in the wondrous House Tibet.

I'm having a terrible time cross-referencing details, so here are my guesses:

1. The Wizard in the Tree, originally published 1974.
   
   
2. The Time of the Witch, originally published 1982.

Thanks. For me it's been a bunch of big realizations intermixed with the mundanity of regular life. This book really helped our kids the other night. We've read it a few times now.

https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Do-Families-Change-Separation/dp/1459809513/ref=asc_df_1459809513/?tag=googlemobshop-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312952025976&hvpos=1o5&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5735295430118674250&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9000081&hvtargid=pla-570617079775&psc=1

Not sure if yours are the right age, but our approach to all of this has been "we are not the best people to handle the logistics of planning these conversations, we're just the best people to execute the conversations."

So we've got an appt with a child therapist and are doing a lot of reading on the subject.

Find professionals. Lean on the experience of others. I figure our kids deserve our best effort here.

Not your fault. Divorce will probably be a load off your shoulders. I was a child but I remember reading this book. http://www.amazon.ca/Divorce-Happens-Nicest-Kids-Self/dp/0933879415

That might possibly be the one book about parent relationships that hasn't been written. Typically a book in this area is written to help kids cope with a stressful situation, one they catch flack about from other people.

Is the daughter experiencing troubles? If not, you might try a more generic book like The Most Special Flower Girl: All the Best Things About Being in a Wedding or I'm a Flower Girl! Activity and Sticker Book.

I do not know if those books mention the nature of the bride and groom (e.g., whether they are friends of the girl's parents or not). I don't see Amazon's 'ask a question' option on those book product pages. You could try posting a comment on a recent review asking the reviewer if it's appropriate for a girl in a situation where it's her mom and dad getting married.

You're welcome! And this was my daughter's favorite book for a while

https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Butterflies-Elizabeth-Fitzgerald-Howard/dp/068817809X

My Not-So-Terrible Time at the Hippie Hostel?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670036110/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=DZ1THAIDVQWT&coliid=ISARB9TTXJ521

Finding Audrey

Mum throwing a computer out the window is just another one on the list of daily miracles.

The Wedding by Eve Bunting?

Amber Brown is on the Move ?