SuitabookNever blame the umpire
Gene Fehler
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the child rather than rushing through the illness and bereavement. Pause after poems or religious questions, allowing disagreement about faith and grief without demanding a single response.
- Themes
- Grief within family life: Kate’s mother’s cancer and death reshape an otherwise active summer, while family members try to respond to Kate’s sorrow and pain. The story treats grief as a sustained emotional experience involving anger, sadness, withdrawal and attempts to protect or support one another.
- Faith under pressure: Kate’s understanding of God is challenged by her mother’s suffering, while religious belief, prayer and the Bible remain central to the story. The book explores this through Kate’s narrative struggle, religious questions, prayer and family responses.
- Poetry as expression: Kate attends a creative-writing class and writes poetry while trying to understand her feelings and religious questions. Poetry is presented as the clearest route into Kate’s emotional process, with prompts and tips described as broadly usable despite her specific experience.
- Worth knowing
- The main point for attention is a mother’s cancer and death, alongside a child’s sorrow, anger and shaken faith. The book also presents prayer, the Bible and belief in God prominently.