On some days, seven-year old Julie feels like she's living in a Fun House. Hers is a topsy-turvy world where the toaster sprouts a toothbrush, and a watermelon gets dressed up in pink underpants for Fourth of July! But on other days, Julie struggles with understanding why her Halloween trick-or-treating got cancelled, or why Grandma can't remember her name. Julie is struggling with understanding her grandmother's Alzheimer's disease. Authors Max Wallack and Carolyn Given believe that no child is too young to learn about this disease, or how to participate in providing safe care for their loved one. Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator? is a sensitive, light-hearted children's story that seamlessly provides its young readers with a toolbox to help them overcome their fears and frustrations. It shares easy-to-understand explanations of what happens inside the brains of Alzheimer's patients, how to cope with gradual memory loss, with a missed holiday, or even a missing Grandma! This 40-page fully illustrated children's book is told from a second-grader's perspective in her own style and vocabulary, but it lovingly shares real strategies, scientific insights and lessons of dignity from which adult caregivers may also benefit. Max Wallack has received numerous national awards for his work on behalf of Alzheimer's patients. These include the Nestle Very Best in Youth Award, the Citizen's Bank Trufit Good Citizen Scholarship, the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Daughters of the American Revolution Community Service Award, and the President's Call to Service Medal. He has published in respected journals in the field of Alzheimer's disease and has presented his work at national and international conferences. Carolyn Given is an experienced caregiver herself and an acclaimed middle and high school educator with particular interest in intergenerational programming. Prior to her teaching career, she served as her town's Council on Aging Director and later became cover-story writer and editor of The Senior Advocate (now called the Fifty Plus Advocate Newspaper), a Massachusetts-based mature market publication. Most recently she was the recipient of an award from the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition sponsored by the National League of American Pen Women. Together, Max and Carolyn have created a book that is a necessity for the millions of children and grandchildren who are currently dealing with this incurable disease.
About the Author: Max Wallack is a 19 year old first year student at Harvard Medical School, as well as a researcher in the Molecular Psychiatry in Aging Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine. Max was a caregiver to his great grandmother who had Alzheimer's Disease, and, in 2008, he founded www.PuzzlesToRemember.org, a 501c3 organization that has supplied over 23,000 puzzles to Alzheimer's facilities around the world. A member of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, Max gives research presentations at national conferences and publishes articles about his work in scientific journals. Max plans to become a geriatric psychiatrist, working with Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers. Carolyn Smith Given is a mother of four, a caregiver, and a resident of the Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts. Since 2000, she has taught English Language Arts and Literature at both middle and high school levels, and currently performs medical research to support her husband's multiple myeloma therapies. For fun, she attends her children's weddings, invents gourmet vegan entrees, maintains a humor blog with more than 80 first person narrative vignettes -- all true - at www.carolyngivenwriter.blogspot.com. She enjoys any and all writing projects that come her way.