“I think adults have to do a better job at being attuned to, and not minimize, what kids are going through in troubling times,” she said. The author’s goal with the Ordinary Terrible Things books is to help both kids and adults through common, potentially upsetting, childhood experiences by putting them in a rational perspective. “Around the same time as my parents’ divorce, I went to two funerals – one of my grandmothers and my grandfather – and I saw my parents grieving at the death of a parent.” Those milestones in her life spawned what will be the next book in the series, Death Is Stupid, due (along with Tell Me About Sex, Grandma) in spring 2016. “For years, I have been carrying around this story, and it ended up becoming this book bearing witness to a child’s perspective on divorce,” she said. Higginbotham’s own childhood experience – her parents separated when she was 14 – inspired her series’ launch title. Illustrated with collage art, the picture book aims to validate children’s emotions as they process the words and actions of divorcing parents, as well as the implications of the end of a marriage. This debut volume in the Ordinary Terrible Things series from The Feminist Press at the City University of New York pubs on April 14. “It can come as a surprise,” opens Anastasia Higginbotham’s Divorce Is the Worst, which provides a candid look at a gender-unspecified child’s reaction to learning of his or her parents’ impending divorce.
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