{"id":173300,"date":"2025-04-06T08:54:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T08:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/my-dog-by-olivia-wakeford-the-federation-of-childrens-book-groups\/"},"modified":"2025-04-06T08:54:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T08:54:42","slug":"my-dog-by-olivia-wakeford-the-federation-of-childrens-book-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=173300","title":{"rendered":"My Dog by Olivia Wakeford \u2013 The Federation of Children&#8217;s Book Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p>Olivia Wakeford writes a guest blog for us about the importance of tackling difficult subjects in children\u2019s books. Her book, My Dog published in February.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-22100\" src=\"https:\/\/fcbg.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/mydog-196x300.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fcbg.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/mydog-196x300.webp 196w, https:\/\/fcbg.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/mydog.webp 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\"\/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Why It\u2019s Important To Tackle Difficult Subjects In Children\u2019s Books<\/p>\n<p>Writing a book about grief is not an easy thing, but one which is so important because, as much as death is something we may not like to think about, we cannot avoid the inevitable because it happens, and it happens to young people every day. In fact, the Childhood Bereavement Network estimate that 26,900 parents die each year in the UK leaving dependant children.* If we don\u2019t write about these things, if we don\u2019t give children a mirror for what they are experiencing, how will they learn to process their feelings? Grief is universal but it\u2019s also individual.<\/p>\n<p>As someone whose mum died when I was a teenager, I\u2019ve always gravitated towards writing about grief, probably even before I realised that\u2019s what I was doing. But with My Dog, my debut middle-grade novel, writing about grief was an active choice. It was a story that I\u2019d had for a while, knocking around in the back of my mind, but one which I wasn\u2019t quite sure I was brave enough to write. How do you begin to write about such a difficult topic? Would it be too sad? Would anyone want to read it? But everything changed when I decided to do a Masters in Writing For Young People and I found my voice. It was a voice that was decidedly Welsh, a voice that I\u2019d avoided writing in the past \u2013 despite being a proud Welsh woman! Subconsciously, perhaps I\u2019d avoided it as it felt too close to my experience of losing my mum, it felt too real and I wasn\u2019t sure I wanted to open that box.<\/p>\n<p>But then my dad died and I was plunged back into that horribly familiar feeling from my teenage years. I knew that if there was ever a time to write about grief, it was when I was going through it myself. So the immediacy of the situation, of everything my main character Rhys feels in My Dog, became the driving force of the novel because that was how I was feeling. I think \u2013 hope \u2013 that it makes the book a more authentic reading experience. And that\u2019s what we need for those children who are also experiencing loss (and for those who aren\u2019t, to understand what it might be like) \u2013 it needs to be authentic. Grief is a complicated, messy emotion and losing someone you love is not something you\u2019re over after a period of time. That\u2019s one of the core messages that I tried to get across in my book, you don\u2019t get over it, you just get used to the change that the loss brings.<\/p>\n<p>Writing about grief also doesn\u2019t always have to be sad \u2013 there are flashes of humour in My Dog because that is reality. When you\u2019re grieving, you\u2019re still functioning, living your life and life can be hard, but it can also be funny and ridiculous and unexpected and still hopeful. I wanted My Dog to end with hope, not to diminish the loss of Rhys\u2019 situation, but to show that even in the midst of darkness, there is light to lead you through.<\/p>\n<p>*<a href=\"https:\/\/childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk\/about\/media-centre\/evidence\/key-statistics\"> https:\/\/childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk\/about\/media-centre\/evidence\/key-statistics<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Olivia Wakeford writes a guest blog for us about the importance of tackling difficult subjects in children\u2019s books. Her book, My Dog published in February. Why It\u2019s Important To Tackle Difficult Subjects In Children\u2019s Books Writing a book about grief is not an easy thing, but one which is so important because, as much as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[2268,352,2634,3723,3724,5498,69310],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-173300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-childrens","tag-dog","tag-federation","tag-groups","tag-olivia","tag-wakeford"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>My Dog by Olivia Wakeford \u2013 The Federation of Children&#039;s Book Groups - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=173300\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Dog by Olivia Wakeford \u2013 The Federation of Children&#039;s Book Groups - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Olivia Wakeford writes a guest blog for us about the importance of tackling difficult subjects in children\u2019s books. 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