Books about life after childhood cancer

Books

• Kind & kanker: Professionals en gezin samen sterk, by Annemiek Kuijer

  Kind & kanker – Professionals en gezin samen sterk is een boek over samenwerken aan waardevolle zorg

  Eline is pas vijf als ze plotseling acute leukemie krijgt. Moeder én arts Annemiek Kuijer beschrijft de intense reis van haar gezin door onzekerheid, pijn en de dagelijkse realiteit van kinderoncologie.

  Ouders, kinderen en behandelaars bouwen samen een band op gebaseerd op openheid, gelijkwaardigheid, optimisme en vertrouwen. Na de schok van de diagnose volgt goed nieuws, en groeit er voorzichtig hoop op een gezonde toekomst. Ontreddering maakt plaats voor moed; broosheid verandert in opvallende veerkracht.

  Een hoopvol verhaal over de weerbaarheid van een kind en een ode aan mensgerichte geneeskunde, waarin ouders en kinderen écht meebeslissen en zorgverleners en patiënten elkaar ontmoeten als mens tot mens.
  
  Meer informatie vind je hier.

• Het kankerkampioenschap voor junioren / Het ziekste spelletje ooit, by Edward van de Vendel

  'This is the craziest game I’ve ever played, but I don’t like losing, so I’ll tell you straight away: I’m not going to die.' With that opening line, the book immediately sets the tone.

  The book is based on the personal story of Roy Looman. The main character, Max, is fifteen and lives like many boys his age: football, girls, friends. Until he feels a strange lump near his collarbone. The diagnosis: cancer. Chemotherapy follows, and the world changes forever.

  Roy’s direct, lively and funny voice resonates throughout the book. In the second half, it becomes more personal: this is when what Roy called his ‘second illness’ sets in — coming to terms with the fact that you have been so close to death.

  Roy is now a doctor and remains the exceptional person who emerges from this book. It was originally published as Het kankerkampioenschap voor junioren and was reissued in the autumn of 2025 as Het ziekste spelletje ooit, in the revamped Slash series.
  
  More information can be found here.

  
  

• Een kikker in mijn buik, by Valerie Strategier

  Valerie was seven years old when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. She was rushed to hospital and one of her kidneys was surgically removed. She underwent radiotherapy. She undergoes chemotherapy for ten months.
  
  Eighteen years later, Valerie looks back on her time as a cancer patient. Through the eyes of the child she once was, we see her mother’s unbearable task of cutting the hair from her already thinning head. Her father’s helplessness. The countless, painful injections in her hand. The nausea. The worn-out caps. The bullying in the school playground. But A Frog in My Tummy is also about the years that followed, about the fear of the tumour returning, the possible after-effects of the chemo and radiotherapy, and the problems Valerie faces during her teenage years.
  
  Een kikker in mijn buik is the moving, surprisingly witty and always hopeful account of a child with cancer. Moreover, it reads as an inspiring tribute to the impressive way in which Valerie gets her life back on track as a young woman.

  

  More information can be  found here.

• Leven na kinderkanker by Valerie Strategier

  The book ‘Life After Childhood Cancer’ (published in October 2017) contains 24 stories from people who had cancer as children. They talk about how they experienced the illness as children and how the illness and treatments have affected their lives. The survivors interviewed had various forms of childhood cancer at different ages and in different years, between 1964 and 2008. You can find more information

  More information can be found here.