Welcome to the Pitcher's Mound!

We're happy to have you here. This is the online home  for my new book, Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound, which tells the story of Tyler Paulson, a 10-year-old boy growing up in the Midwest who loves baseball and is coping with the cancer diagnosis of his mom.

A cancer diagnosis affects the entire family, but the emotional impact on a child whose parent has cancer often goes unnoticed and unattended.

More than 300,000 parents of children under 18 in the United States alone were diagnosed with cancer in the last year, yet many of them would admit that they don't always know how to talk to their kids about their cancer or how to deal with their child’s anger, sadness, confusion and fear.

I hope to change that with this new book and website. By explaining Tyler’s emotional changes, in the child’s own voice and in an accessible, humorous and hopefully entertaining way, I want to help young readers and their parents understand a child’s natural course of emotions when a mom or dad is diagnosed with cancer. My goal is to make a real and lasting difference in the lives of children and their families touched by cancer.  

I’ve been a professional writer for 25 years, and a longtime cancer patient advocate, but Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound is my most personal project, and the one of which I am the most proud. As a loving dad and a four-time survivor of stage IV non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I’ve had had many long talks with my daughter about my cancer battle. 

The culmination of those talks, and of my spending thousands of hours in the last decade with lymphoma patients, survivors and their loved ones, is this book and website.

On this blog I plan to initiate an ongoing conversation with and for children and their families about what it’s really like for a child to have a parent with cancer. Most importantly, I'll be offering ways to help kids and their parents cope and will be writing about all kinds of related issues and sharing resources. We are proudly affiliated with the Children's Treehouse Foundation, a global nonprofit 501c3 cancer organization whose sole mission is to support children and teens who have a mom or dad with cancer. 

I welcome your input about how we can help children who have a parent with cancer. And I’m talking about any age kid, and any type of cancer. I want to hear your stories, and with your permission I want to tell your stories on this blog. I want to hear from you. My direct email is  jreno@san.rr.com. 

If you are interested in purchasing the book, or in just talking about issues related to cancer, kids, parenting, or anything else, please drop me a note. I will respond to you directly.

Soon, we will have an online eBook for everyone to enjoy.

Meantime, I welcome you to look around the site, and to check out  Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound. Whether you are a child or a grownup, I hope the book and this website are both of some value to you. It’s great to have you here on the Pitcher’s Mound.

Sincerely,
Jamie Reno