Critical Issues book

A pillow for my mom


Sgouros, C. (1998). A pillow for my mom. New York: Houghton Mifflin company.


ISBN: 0-395-82280-7


This is a book about a girl whose mother is sick, and she is not able to tell her story any more. The mother gets worse and has to go to the hospital. The daughter misses her mother very much, and decides to make a pillow for her so that her mother can put her head on it, and feel more comfortable. So she made it and gave it to her mother. After a while her mother dies, so whenever the daughter misses her mother, she puts her head on that pillow to help her feel better.

I think this book is good for 3-5 year olds as its simple and the pictures are large enough that they maintain childrens attention, as well as being large enough to see the daughters facial expressions, and thus, see her emotional reactions. One of the important messages that this book has for children is that it teaches them how, in these sad situations, children can help themselves to feel better. As we see in this story the daughter made a pillow for her mom, and after she lost her mother, that pillow gave her a feeling that her mother was still with her. This helps children to understand that comfort can come from something that was special to the family member that passed (in this case a pillow), and that something can then become something special to the child that lost that family member. This, then can help the child to better be able to handle the death of their family member; it will never replace the family member, but it can bring the child closer to them through triggering happy memories.