Is it just me, or have you and your peers been discussing it? Dead moms and dads are growing at an alarming rate in too many contemporary books for young people. I'm no statistician, but aren't divorce and family separation more common in our country? As someone who has survived a life-threatening illness, I have been more of a potentially-dead mother of teens – bluntly speaking – than the average Canadian my age. I take personal umbrage with the dead-parent-as easy-plot-device. "The author does the dead parent thing," a student remarked, "so the kid in the story has a reason to have issues." Please say it isn't so!