The Un-Wedding

By: Babette Cole (1998)

This book is about two parents that disagree on a lot of things and argue about those disagreements. The longer they live together the more they dislike each other and the uglier they get because they are thinking ugly thoughts about each other. This arguing makes their kids unhappy so they ask around at school if anyone else is having the same problems and many kids respond that they are having similar problems. This helps their children feel better and they decide to suggest that their parents have an "unwedding" where they un-married, and their parents agree to the idea. In the end, both of the parents end up being happy on their own.

I think that this book may be considered controversial because divorce can be a very sensitive subject for many people and some teachers or parents may want to keep it out of the classroom to protect their students or children.
I really liked this book and thought that it brought some humor to the topic to make sure that it was not depressing. I liked how the words and pictures really worked together to tell the story. Each page was filled with lots of funny pictures showing the differences between the two parents and you really were able to read any of the lines in any order, which gave you some freedom as a reader.

This is a book that I would definitely recommend and may consider reading in my classroom because of how common divorces seem to be and I think that the humor used in this book, combined with the overall message  would make this a very effective book. I think that students would be able to relate to the feelings of the children in this book and they would probably appreciate seeing that they were not the only ones going through these emotions. Realizing that they had others to talk to that could relate to their feelings would hopefully make them feel much more comfortable in my classroom.