Disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11 were time-limited. The children who were affected psychologically could go to a place of normalcy.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Children and teens need to explore the dark side as a healthy part of growing. If a child is protected from everything dreadful, he will have no coping mechanisms in place when finally confronted with disaster.
Childhood is just this amazing place, and in my books, I was trying to express my concern about childhood being eroded. You have kids' TV programs being interrupted by terrorist attacks, and kids are exposed to so much these days.
I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.
Children are resilient and strong with powerful spirits.
9/11, the wars and terrorism have affected all of us in different ways: people who lost family on 9/11, the people who lost family in the wars and people who lost family in various terrorist attacks that have occurred since.
Kids are mostly very resilient.
Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else. I'll never forget the wrenching days I spent in Haiti last year for Save the Children just weeks after the earthquake.
Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.
The news media is so quick to pick up tragic stories of imperiled children that it seems like there are more terrible events today than ever before - when in fact it's quite the opposite. It is, in all manners possible to calculate, the safest time in the history of civilization to be a kid.
Oklahoma City, Katrina... those happened to other unfortunate people. But 9/11, that happened to us all. And that was pretty much the genesis of 'Reign Over Me.'