Audrey Freudenberg

My Red Balloon Audrey Freudenberg

We want to protect our children. We want to keep them safe, away from danger. Some books for children trump up foreign problems to hold interest, gin up sample conflicts, whose terms can't enter the child's life, kept out categorically by boundaries of place or time or species. But there is one danger of danger-less books: we may begin to believe that danger is, by definition, outside of our own world. What makes holding a child's interest IN that child's best interest? What puts power in their hands, grit in the young-and-as-yet-pearl-less oyster? Epilepsy is a disorder that is all unseen - until it's all that can be seen. Sufferers can't escape, witnesses can't look away. When boundaries mislead, people are right to be afraid: then, engaging danger can alleviate the social anxiety that, otherwise, divides us from the neighbors whom we need. My Red Balloon offers parents and children tools with which to discuss andunderstand how a person's pain - disease, dread, anger, difference, loss of agency - while real, does not have to end their world, or stop the conversation. With the confidence that tools & kindness bring, it might begin one. Take your child into the safety of your arms, and let them own, with you, a power that's up to the crafty task of healing.