My thanks to Marifer Busqueta for connecting me to this wonderful bilingual children’s book for children and families facing cancer:
The information below is copied directly from the book’s website benito books. Marifer herself has written a children’s book in Spanish to address children’s questions about loss and death, “I want to know what is death?”. It is wonderful to have access to books for Spanish speaking and bilingual children facing illness and loss.
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Overview
Benito, You Can Do It! Volume 1 is the first in a series of bilingual picture books for children diagnosed with cancer. This 80-page (40 in English and 40 in Spanish) picture book depicts a Latino family facing childhood cancer and uses a soccer analogy to explain the roles of the medical team.
Written and illustrated by Alan Quinonez, this book helps parents find strength and hope when one of their little ones has been diagnosed with cancer.
Our Goals
The picture book series Benito, You Can Do It! has been inspired by the testimonials from the families in the Latinas Contra Cancer Parent Support Group as well as the expert knowledge and input of the medical team at Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital.
Our goals in developing this first-of-its-kind book series reflecting the Latino experience are:
- To the affected families to share the resources, advice, and best practices learned from the cancer journey with their child.
- To show the cancer survivors that this is an opportunity for them to step into the limelight and reach out to those who might lose faith.
The book series
Our first volume The News, helps children and their families cope with a recent diagnosis by providing a better understanding of the disease, and the medical team that will be helping them.
Upcoming volumes in the series are:
- Vol.2 The Awareness (working title) Will explain how the immediate family of a child with cancer faces twice the risk of developing the disease, and what steps the family can take to reduce the risk.
- Vol. 3 The Treatment will explain the different types of treatment and life at the hospital.
- Vol. 4 The Siblings will help brothers and sisters process their own feelings of being set aside and neglected.
- Vol. 5 The Return to School will explore the anxiety that children face when they go back to school before their hair has regrown.
Our fundraising on Kickstarer
From Sep 6th to Oct 6th 2013, we ran a kickstarter fundraising campaign.
Thanks to the generous donations from 171 backers, we were able to raise over $12,000, which allowed us to cover the costs of print, as well as set aside 110 books and make them available for free to families in need!
At our campaign page you can:
- Watch a 3 minute video with the story of this project
- Keep tabs with our latest updates
- See the list of our 171 generous backers
Alan Quiñonez is a writer and illustrator working on his dream of telling stories that cross language barriers and foster a message of hope and strength in children and families around the world. He lives with his partner in North Hollywood. His personal website is alanrq.com
About Latinas Contra Cancer
Latinas Contra Cancer is a decade old nonprofit based in San Jose, California. Founded by Ysabel Duron, a cancer survivor, this agency, one of the few of its kind in the country, works to improve outcomes for Latino families affected by cancer by increasing awareness and knowledge, access to care, and psychosocial support.
Learn more at latinascontracancer.org
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That’s wonderful!
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