Mooshu Worries

Yona Diamond Dansky

Imagine being Jackie, a small child whose mother has been diagnosed with cancer. It’s very worrying to see a parent in pain, and there are lots of changes in a child’s routines. This picture book helps ease worry when a parent has a serious or chronic illness. Seeing the situation as family dog Mooshu views it helps make the child’s coping a bit easier. After worrying about long waits to take walks, Mooshu enhances his wait time with hugs. This book is about the importance of being in the moment, without promises about the future.

Yona Diamond Dansky

About The Author

Yona Diamond Dansky is a lifelong educator and mentor. She has an unrelenting passion for empowering teachers and parents to understand and meet the emerging needs of children and youth to scaffold their development and well-being. Yona began her career in special education as a teacher of deaf students; she has been a teacher, program coordinator and administrator in inner-city and suburban districts in the Philadelphia area. She is a mother and grandmother as well, with many stories to share.

Mooshu Worries is her first children’s book, and she is both author and illustrator. It was inspired by her three-year-old grandson’s journey through his mom’s — Yona’s daughter’s –diagnosis and successful cancer treatment. The stories written for children in this setting seemed too personal and upsetting to him, and it appeared much more comforting to view the upheaval from a little distance, through the eyes of a pet. Almost every family has been touched in some way by serious illness and can relate to this story.