I really enjoyed reading Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto. My favorite part of it was right after she found out she had cancer and she shot up into outer space. I think that this really illustrates how she feels lonely and scared in a place she knows nothing about. I think something else that really adds to the book is that this is a true story, and that the author and illustrator went through this exact thing. This makes some scenes much more devastating, specifically the scene where she doesn’t want to tell Silvano she has cancer because she’s scared he’s going to leave her. This is a real fear and it happens all the time. In one of my psychology classes we talked about how when the wife gets sick it becomes “too much” for the husband and a lot of the time the husband will leave. However, if the husband gets sick, the wife typically will stay and take care of him. I think that the character knowing this, and that there’s a chance that he might leave her, makes this even more terrifying for her. I also like how this is illustrated because it’s comforting for her. The author likes to illustrate and draw cartoons, and I think that using this format is helping her express herself in a comfortable way.
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