If it were any other
winter day in Minnesota, it might've been nice. It was warm
enough for the snow to melt and you could almost see that
spring was coming. But inside the house in east St. Paul,
there were shadows across a dark fireplace and quiet floors.
There was light in the house, but no sunshine.
Pictures hung on the wall
but it was hard to look at them because they reminded the
family inside the house that one of them was missing. It had
been seven months since the girl with the shiny brown hair
and big toothy smile, the happy little girl in a framed
picture, had walked into a lake, misstepped, and
accidentally drowned.
Nobody had seen it happen
and nobody in the family could forget. The mother and the
father couldn't even bear to take the sheets off the girl's
bed and for seven months, they visited her room and cried
once, twice, three times a day. The house was quiet, except
when someone would play a video of the girl on their phone,
and everyone watched.
But then, something
shifted.
Ever since the youngest
brother was born, the oldest brother shared a bedroom with
him in the house in east St. Paul. There were four bedrooms,
four children and two parents, so there had to be sharing –
until the parents asked the oldest brother if he'd like to
have his sister's room. He'd have her bed. He would have her
dresser and her closet.
But he would never have
her back. Would he miss his sister forever?
Is The Shared Room
a book for children?
You may wonder that after
you've read it through once – and you should, to gauge its
appropriateness for your child before you present it. It's a
lovely story, but it's also deeply, unbearably sad.
While the artwork by Xee
Reiter may soften things a bit, author Kao Kalia Yang's tale
starts with silence and ends like a grey tattered shawl
draped over every page. This profound mourning leaves a
heaviness over the story that stays well beyond the final
page, and you'll feel it in your chest.
And yet, if you can
withstand the pall, there's a sliver of hope inside this
book and a reminder that life goes on. It also serves to
tell a child that it's best to come to terms with death but
that never forgetting is okay, too.
Again, read this book
through once before you give it to your
eight-to-12-year-old. The Shared Room may prove to be
too much, too early, too overwhelming – or it may change
your child's grieving.
|