*** BOOK REVIEW: ALWAYS JACK!

Joined: Sep 06, 2010 Posts: 4

[ALWAYS JACK] by Susanne Gervay - both the Cancer Council NSW and the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre have pledged support for Susanne Gervay’s book Always Jack. This book highlights the challenges that children face when a parent is diagnosed with cancer.

I have seen how family and friends can be affected when a loved one has cancer and I think this challenge is especially difficult when there are kids involved, so I think this book is a great idea to help explain what is happening to the small people in your life.

Always Jack uses humour to break down the taboos surrounding cancer and encourages parents, teachers and children to discuss the subject openly.

A multiple breast cancer survivor herself, author Susanne Gervay faced cancer when her children were six and nine years of age, again when they were teenagers and yet again just recently. She clearly has firsthand experience of just how alone young people can feel when cancer touches their lives.

While she found Always Jack an emotionally difficult book to write, Susanne is passionate about reaching children, parents, schools and the community. As a result, she is donating a percentage of her royalties to Cancer Council and NBOCC.

Always Jack also includes details of the Cancer Council Helpline for families and children in need of support. The book will be available from October 1!

Joined: Sep 06, 2010 Posts: 4

Despite tackling some serious issues (war and serious illness), this is a sweet and rather endearing book, the third in Susanne Gervay’s ‘Jack’ series. Her 12-year-old protagonist seems pretty well adjusted—everything in his life is going along swimmingly. His family has just moved into a new house, with plenty of room for his soon-to-be stepdad, mum, nanna, sister and pet rat. There are only a few niggling concerns: Jack is not too pleased about having to be a penguin (in bow tie and suit) for his mum’s impending wedding, and is unsure about the position Leo, his future stepbrother, has in the extended family dynamic. Then comes the news about his mum’s breast cancer and Jack’s happy world implodes. The novel charts how a community of well-wishers rallies around to help support a suddenly shell-shocked family. With a light touch, Gervay portrays blended and multigenerational families co-existing with little friction. Jack’s best friends, Anna and Christopher, are from Italian and Vietnamese ancestry, respectively, so the novel also manages to explore different cultures, albeit in a neceassarily simplified manner to cater for a young teenage readership. Reassuringly for a YA market, there is a happy ending. But perhaps just a bit too cosy and rosy.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (September 2010, Vol 90, No. 2) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2010, Thorpe-Bowker.