In the late 1990s, Lynne Golodner hosted writing camps for children. When one of her campers was diagnosed with leukemia, she started visiting the young girl to write together as a way to process her emotions and experiences as she went through treatment. Those writing sessions became this book, In The Shadow of the Tree: A Therapeutic Writing Guide for Children with Cancer, with the young patient’s poems as examples for Lynne’s writing exercises. The girl is now a pediatric oncologist and a mother herself.

Praise for this book:

“This book is not only an excellent collection of creative writing exercises for children struggling with serious illnesses, but it is a wonderful text that will give hope and wisdom to all who read and work with it. I found this book to be both humane and practical as a great creative tool to help discover what is inside the soul when the body is in a battle for life. Lynne and Elana have given hope and life through the literary arts. This is a remarkable book to help us all better understand the purposes of our lives.” M.L. Liebler

“What the authors have accomplished with In the Shadow of the Tree is both profound and wonderfully simple. Simple in the sense that immersion in language can quietly improve a young cancer patient’s self-esteem; profound in the way that only something created with compassion and love for others can be. This workbook is a document of hope.” Stewart Francke

“Through the use of poetry, the authors teach creative writing skills to cancer patients as a vehicle for them to work through the emotional issues that occur across the various stages of the cancer continuum. This groundbreaking book is for young people grappling with this disease. The book is replete with powerful, inspirational and thought-provoking poems, which give optimism to those who read them. The authors are to be commended for giving this patient group a means to cope with illness in their own unique way.” Steven Spector, Ph.D.