Kemo Shark is the hero of a sixteen page color "comic book" designed to help children understand
the psychological and physiological changes in a parent with cancer who undergoes chemotherapy.
Kemo Shark was written by a child psychologist, H. Elizabeth King, Ph.D., who is also a breast cancer survivor.
Her then eight-year-old son, Mitchell McGough, like most children, had a hard time understanding why his mother
had to have chemotherapy when it made her feel so bad and caused so many changes in her appearance.
To help himself understand and cope with all these changes, he imagined a shark, Kemo Shark,
swimming around in his mother, eating the bad cancer cells and bumping into the good ones,
thereby creating some unintended "side effects". His idea became the basis for Kemo Shark, which deals with
these issues in a child-friendly way. Kemo Shark is available in English or Spanish, free of charge, to individuals
in countries where English or Spanish is a primary language.
Click on the link to the right to download an electronic version of the comic (Microsoft Word document - 3.30 Mb size).
It may take between 1 minute to 8 minutes to download depending on the speed of your internet connection. Please be patient.
Or, you may click on the link to the left to order a hard copy of the comic or the DVD, which includes the comic and our informational video "My Mom Has Breast Cancer: A Guide for Families".
