Guest Post by Alan Jordan

Alan H. Jordan is an accomplished author with six business books, hundreds of articles, poems, and audio books to his credit. His children’s book, The Monster on Top of the Bed, has received superb reviews. His poetry has been published in major poetry journals like Mobius, The Poetry Magazine. Details about his forthcoming books may be found at http://www.GreatShowcases.com.

The thing about being a widow is that it's not a temporary thing. It's forever. It's not just your past that changes, all of your future dreams are cancelled. Okay, it's quite possible to build new dreams, but all of the dreams that you had for sharing your life with your husband are gone. Worse yet, if you have young children, the passing of their father wipes out their dreams, and can make them concerned about forgetting their father.

There's no easy way to deal with this situation. That's why so many widows seek professional counseling, and turn to books for solace. There are many workbooks that help children to journal about someone who passed over. My favorite ones are I Will Never Forget You, Love Never Stops and Kids Can Cope written by Emilio Parga, the founder of Solace Tree, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children go through the grieving process in a constructive, healthy way. But, if you go into a bookstore and ask the clerk to show you a book to help a child celebrate their deceased father's life, you're likely to be shown picture books that discuss death and Heaven in a gentle way. These books are fine for young children, but what about the 7 to 10 year old who understands that their father is dead, and is turning to you for help in celebrating their Dad's life? Picture books definitely don't work well for tweens and teenagers. These are children who process their grief by blogging, tagging pictures, writing on Facebook, and texting their friends. They seek inspiration, not advice, and they build their lives around a phone or smartphone. What can you do to help them?

I asked myself “What can I do to help?” Being an author, the answer that bubbled up in my mind was, “write a book that can be read on a smartphone, a book that does not tell someone what to think, but instead provides a way for each reader to discover their own answers. The result was four Kindle books. These be downloaded onto any Kindle reader, computer or more importantly for children, tweens and teenagers, onto any iPhone, Droid or smartphone, where it can opened in the click of an icon and viewed instantly, in full color, with just a couple of taps on a screen.

Learning how to use a Kindle book is easy, but you don't have to know how to do it. Your children will know, or be able to figure it out in just a minute or two. This means that they can view the book on their phone, in privacy, or that the book can be viewed on a large screen, and the entire family can discuss it. Poetry and photography are meant to be examined, to be discussed. When you view the book with your children or grandchildren, you're likely to find that it's just about impossible to not get into discussions about the beauty of the universe, the eternal nature of life, the best way to celebrate someone's life, Heaven and the heavens. Kids get this! They like not being told how to think.

I Am Here, Dad costs $.99 It combines a short, potent poem with celestial images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and it empowers children, tweens, teens and adults to celebrate the life of their father. It's a quick read, you can go through the poem and images of nebula, suns, galaxies in less than two minutes. You can also spend hours in contemplation, and for those who are interested in the science behind the pictures, there are footnotes that provide in--depth scientific explanations written by scientists, as well as a brief note explaining why I selected each image.

A companion book (also $.99) is Relax, Rejoice and Rejunvenate, Volume 1. It features an affirmation for every day of the year, an affirmation for everyday use, and spiritual photographs I personally took, on Earth, with a digital camera.

These books may just be the two dollars you've ever spent, and if you're not sure, you can download a preview of them for free from my page on the Amazon’s Kindle Store.

You can easily spend $30 or more in a bookstore, and not score as well with your kids as by buying these two Kindle books for them and yourself.