Sometimes the Mom Just Has to Die - Guest Post by Kristine Rudolph
I’ve been a part of two different Mother & Child book clubs with my kids over the past decade and there’s a question that the parents, mostly new to middle grade and YA, invariably ask. “Why do the moms always have to die?” The question is usually met with a chorus of Harry Potter and Bambi – actually lots of Disney movies get cited – and a general sense of frustration that we moms, super important in the lives of our children, tend to get offed in the very first pages. That is if we make it “onscreen” at all. I usually wait for the din to fade before piping in. “The moms have to die because how else can the children figure things out for themselves? The main character has to grow, and that growth needs to come from somewhere besides Mom stepping in to solve, or show you how to solve, the problem.” The moms don’t always die, of course, even if it feels that way sometimes. But in upper middle grade and YA literature, the parents do take a step back. They lose some of thei...
