The Brain Health and Wellness Center is pleased to announce that one of our favorite innovators, Max Wallack, has just published an amazing children’s book. The book is called “Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator?” and is available at Amazon.com. It is authored by Max Wallack and Carolyn Given. 50% of the profits will go to Alzheimer’s causes.
Readers may recall that Max Wallack is an inventor and developer of Puzzles to Remember that he created when he was only 14, now offered for retail by Springbok. (Puzzles to Remember was featured in our Dec 2011 newsletter. Max was recently honored by the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center at its brunch for participants in its major HOPE research study. At the brunch, Max donated puzzles for a lucky person at each of dozens of tables. Max Wallack has also donated funds to the BUADC research efforts. Below is a description of Max’s book, “Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator?” as well as a brief bio for Max:
“On some days, seven-year old Julie feels like she’s living in a Fun House. Hers is a topsy-turvy world where the toaster sprouts a toothbrush, and a watermelon gets dressed up in pink underpants for Fourth of July! But on other days, Julie struggles with understanding why her Halloween trick-or-treating got cancelled, or why Grandma can’t remember her name. Julie is struggling with understanding her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease. Authors Max Wallack and Carolyn Given believe that no child is too young to learn about this disease, or how to participate in providing safe care for their loved one. Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator? is a sensitive, light-hearted children’s story that seamlessly provides its young readers with a toolbox to help them overcome their fears and frustrations. It shares easy-to-understand explanations of what happens inside the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, how to cope with gradual memory loss, with a missed holiday, or even a missing Grandma! This 40-page fully illustrated children’s book is told from a second-grader’s perspective in her own style and vocabulary, but it lovingly shares real strategies, scientific insights and lessons of dignity from which adult caregivers may also benefit.”
“Max Wallack is a 17 year old junior at Boston University, as well as a researcher in the Molecular Psychiatry in Aging Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine. Max was a caregiver to his great grandmother who had Alzheimer’s Disease, and, in 2008, he founded www.PuzzlesToRemember.org, a 501c3 organization that has supplied over 23,000 puzzles to Alzheimer’s facilities around the world. A member of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, Max gives research presentations at national conferences and publishes articles about his work in scientific journals. Max plans to become a geriatric psychiatrist, working with Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers. Carolyn Smith Given is a mother of four, a caregiver, and a resident of the Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts. Since 2000, she has taught English Language Arts and Literature at both middle and high school levels, and currently performs medical research to support her husband’s multiple myeloma therapies. For fun, she attends her children’s weddings, invents gourmet vegan entrees, maintains a humor blog with more than 80 first person narrative vignettes — all true – at www.carolyngivenwriter.blogspot.com. She enjoys any and all writing projects that come her way.”
Please check out this book and recommend it to others. Remember the proceeds will be going towards solving the major challenge that is Alzheimer’s disease.
