Connecticut Boy Writes Book To Educate Other Kids on Breast Cancer
A tear rolled down Veronica Marion-Rawlins’s cheek when she discovered there weren’t ample resources that could help her explain her breast cancer diagnosis to her then four-year-old son. The single mom and her son, James “Trey” Rawlins III, searched everywhere – from local booksellers to online retailers – for reading materials that could help them better understand the journey they were about to embark on together. When they ended up with nothing,Trey decided to write a book himself.
Five years later, Trey, now age nine and a fourth-grader at Edgewood Magnet School in New Haven, Conn., is a published author, with help from a $1,000 donation from Howard University Hospital, in Washington, D.C., and his mom’s credit cards. “When Mommy Came Home” is targeted toward children ages four to seven. By word-of-mouth the book, available for $10 through his mother, became so popular among local schools, clinics and hospitals that it is now sold out. The mother-son team hopes that with donations, they will be able to order more books that can be distributed to the people and places that may need them most.
Pictured: Veronica Marion-Rawlins with her son, James “Trey” Rawlins III, who published a children’s book about his life experiences when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. (Photo by Jean Marie Sanchez)
