"Mommy's wig was still attached to her head, but she didn't look so good. The wig-hair stuck out like snarled rat-tails in all directions. There was a crooked horizontal line right where her smile should be. Worst of all, she was in no mood to play Tickles Tabitha."The award-winning "Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy" was released October 2001, to a national audience on the Rosie O'Donnell Show. Its release helped pioneer resources for families coping with cancer. Diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34, this is the story Amelia Frahm wrote to help explain her cancer diagnosis to her own children. Told through her daughter, Tabitha's eyes, the book uses candor and comic reality as it acknowledges some of the moody truths faced by families living with cancer. Mom is tired, scared, and hungry. Tabitha is worried; her little brother is making a mess, and Dad is watching the ball game instead of paying attention to Mommy. The book makes no promises about Mommy's health, but the children are assured that no matter what happens Mommy will always love them.
About the Author: Amelia Frahm is an author, advocate and cancer survivor known for taking contentious, difficult topics and putting them in a format children understand and find interesting. She's also the creator of Crack Open a Book! which provided the first cancer education school program curriculum written and taught by a cancer survivor. In 1994, she was 34 years old and the mom of two young children when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She soon discovered that cancer was not being talked about out loud to children, or pictured in a children's book. So she wrote her children their own story. In October 2001, "Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-takerous Mommy" was launched on the Rosie O'Donnell Show. Its release helped pioneer resources for families coping with cancer. Pioneering that change was not always easy. Talking to young children about cancer was not a popular idea when Frahm first penned her book, and it would be a decade later before perceptions changed, and she would be invited to speak to elementary classrooms about the topic. Frahm said, "My cancer diagnosis set me on course for a career I never planned, and even prepared me for the nausea that accompanied it." In 2011, in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, she released another contentious book topic. "Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works!" October of 2013 she was honored to be the recipient of the Susan G. Komen Triangle to the Coast Maureen Thomas Jordan Spirit of Survivorship Award. She's a member of the National Cancer Survivors Day speakers' bureau, and founding member of the Go Nuclear, Inc. Board of Advisors. For Information about Crack Open a Book! School Programs visit: www.NutcrackerPublishing.com Visit the Authors Blog at: http: //ameliafrahm.blogspot.com/