Guest Post: Drienie Hattingh on Christy Monson's New Release, Love, Hugs, and Hope

Author Christy Monson has a new children's book out, and her good friend Drienie Hattingh was on hand to write us up a review about it. Take it away, Drienie.

LOVE, HUGS, AND HOPE:

When Scary Things Happen

Author: Christy Monson

This delightfully illustrated self-help children’s book is a must-have for parents to share with their children after traumatic events. In a very direct but kind way, Christy Monson’s words will help children get through difficult times.
 
Christy was born in Medford Oregon, and now lives in Ogden, Utah, with her husband. Through her husband’s work, they travelled a lot and lived in several places in the United States—Utah, Idaho, Michigan, California, Nevada, and finally back in Utah. During this process, they raised six children. After Christy’s children were in school, she went back to UNLV to become a marriage and family therapist, setting up a practice in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The first draft of Love, Hugs, and Hope: When Scary Things Happen took Christy about a week to write. She felt the need to write this little book after several heartbreaking incidents in America—the school shooting at Sandy Hook, and shortly after when a gunman shot up the Clackamas Towne Center in Oregon. Christy’s daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters live about three miles from the center.

Even though parents turned off all media, Christy knew they couldn’t protect children by keeping the truth from them. Children needed to share their feelings and find hope in the difficult world surrounding them during such traumatic events.

As these thoughts manifested in Christy’s mind after these catastrophes, she felt something had to be written to help parents and children work through such disasters … and the idea for this little book was born.

Christy wrote the book with one primary idea in mind and that was to answer the question: What do you do when scary things happen? The result is a delightfully illustrated little book all about love and light that will help children everywhere to process hurt and anger and help them heal from tragedies. The book is not only meant for major disasters like the ones mentioned earlier, but it can be helpful to parents and children in the event of the loss of a friend or a grandparent and even the death of a beloved pet.

To my mind, the book accomplishes what the author set out to do and so eloquently states in her book: “Love chases away hate and light chases away the dark.”
  
Love, Hugs, and Hope is available in hardcover, Kindle, Nook, iPad, and ePub. Purchase it on Amazon.com by clicking here, and come meet Christy Monson by clicking here. 



Drienie Hattingh was born and raised in South Africa. She now lives in Ogden, Utah, with her husband, Johan. She has been a columnist for 18 years and her writings have been published in newspapers and magazines in America and overseas. Her stories appeared in anthologies such as ‘Christmas Miracles’ and ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ (St. Martin’s Press) as well as ‘Lessons from my Parents’ (Familius). She also compiled, published and contributed stories to three ghost anthologies, ‘Tales from Huntsville, Eden, Liberty and Beyond…’ and Part I and II of ‘Tales from Two-Bit Street and Beyond…’