1989 "First Edition" stated; "Children Surviving Cancer"; SIGNED BY ERMA BOMBECK inside cover as happy birthday to "Bee"; Harper & Row publishers, New York; hardbound in mustard boards with author's signature embossed on cover and red lettering along spine; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
 
Description -
America's favorite family writer presents a warm, important book about children surviving cancer. Using the children's own observations and illustrations, Bombeck will move you with tales of the hope, love and innocence of childhood. Harper & Row.
 
Until the mid-1980’s, Erma Bombeck considered herself a light comedy writer. In books such as “At Wit’s End” and “Aunt Erma’s Cope Book,” she wrote about the amusing things that happened in her family and with her friends.
 
Then, in 1987, she met Ann Wheat, the director of Sunrise Camp, a camp for children with cancer. Wheat wanted Bombeck to write an optimistic pamphlet or booklet for children with cancer and their families.
Bombeck was reluctant. She couldn’t see anything light or funny about children with cancer. Then she visited Camp Sunrise and fell down the rabbit’s hole into a new world of humor. The kids at the camp did typical kid things like sneaking out at night to swim and having food fights. But they also had a unique brand of humor. Some of the boys, for instance, placed bets on who could withstand chemotherapy the longest without throwing up. And one girl said she wouldn’t let a doctor work on her unless that doctor could first solve a Rubik’s cube.
 
Erma Bombeck quickly realized that she needed to cover far more material than would fit in a book or a pamphlet. Instead, she wrote a 174-page book, “I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer.”