Youngstown State instructor publishes children’s book to help families talk about cancer
Meet Crystal Bannon, a faculty member at Youngstown State University who’s also a mom, breast cancer survivor and now, a self-published author.
Bannon wrote and published a children’s book to help other parents and young children talk about cancer treatment and changes.
She said one of the best ways she’s learned to explain things to her son, Mateo, who was seven years old at the time of her diagnosis, was through books.
“I was like, ‘Okay, well, let me find a book to read him and give him an idea about what Mommy’s gonna be going through. And I found that there wasn’t a huge selection to choose from,” said Bannon. “I bought what was out there at the time.”
Bannon was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. She’s been teaching public speaking skills in the Communication Foundations class at YSU for 16 years.
“Sitting there during chemo [in 2020] -- they were about eight-hour treatments for a year every other Monday -- I was like, why don’t I just jot some notes down in a Google Doc and put together some sort of resource?” she said. “Fast forward three years, now I finally well enough, got the opportunity to really move forward with it and get it all finished.”
When was Bannon’s book released?
Bannon published Caring Through Cancer: A Story of Love and Strength on Feb. 16 through Kindle Direct Publishing with illustrations by a freelance artist she hired through Fiver.
Paperback copies are available starting this week through Amazon.
She’s also dropping off copies of the books at local clinics in Pennsylvania and Ohio where she received treatment.
“As an educator, my whole goal was to give a resource to people that may be going through this who have small children, like young people that are hit with this tragedy and it’s terrifying,” Bannon said. “I used Hillman Cancer Center in Cranberry, Penn. and I’m going to be dropping off a lot of my books to give as resources to patients there in the chemo center. I’m going to be bringing them to the different chemo centers here in Youngstown.”
Bannon said she’s giving copies of her book to a group she volunteers with called Pink Lights the Way in Warren.
“They’re survivors who put together an organization where they send out care packages and different things to people who are going through the cancer journey. I’m going to be providing them with copies to be able to put into the care packages,” Bannon said. “Financially, I’ll never be able to repay everyone that sent me things, but if I can give a resource to their children or family, I feel like I can maybe help a little bit.”
She shared encouragement for other parents going through cancer to keep their children involved in their treatment as much as they can to help the kids “not feel so lost.”
“Keep the kids involved throughout the process,” she said. “I know when they’re little, it’s hard, but I think the best thing I could have done was to, in a child-friendly way, keep my son involved in the process because then he understood when Mommy wasn’t feeling well or when Mommy was bald, when my hair grew back and when I rang the bell. Because I went through this during the pandemic, it was hard, but the hospitals that I did do chemo and radiation at they did let him in at the end to watch me ring the bell.”
Bannon’s already working on her next non-fiction project, but this one’s not a children’s book.
“It’s more of a comedic relief type book that would be relatable to people going through the journey,” Bannon said. “So many funny things that have happened to me during it, conversations with people who asked me really off-the-wall type things. It’s going to be in a different genre, not going to be in the children’s area, but I probably will go through the same process using KDP and using freelancers for the graphics. It’s gonna be a short story for sure.”
