My Dog by Olivia Wakeford

Olivia Wakeford writes a guest blog for us about the importance of tackling difficult subjects in children’s books. Her book, My Dog published in February.

Why It’s Important To Tackle Difficult Subjects In Children’s Books

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’t write about these things, if we don’t give children a mirror for what they are experiencing, how will they learn to process their feelings? Grief is universal but it’s also individual.

As someone whose mum died when I was a teenager, I’ve always gravitated towards writing about grief, probably even before I realised that’s 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’d had for a while, knocking around in the back of my mind, but one which I wasn’t 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’d avoided writing in the past – despite being a proud Welsh woman! Subconsciously, perhaps I’d avoided it as it felt too close to my experience of losing my mum, it felt too real and I wasn’t sure I wanted to open that box.

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 – hope – that it makes the book a more authentic reading experience. And that’s what we need for those children who are also experiencing loss (and for those who aren’t, to understand what it might be like) – it needs to be authentic. Grief is a complicated, messy emotion and losing someone you love is not something you’re over after a period of time. That’s one of the core messages that I tried to get across in my book, you don’t get over it, you just get used to the change that the loss brings.

Writing about grief also doesn’t always have to be sad – there are flashes of humour in My Dog because that is reality. When you’re grieving, you’re 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’ situation, but to show that even in the midst of darkness, there is light to lead you through.

* https://childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk/about/media-centre/evidence/key-statistics