Dear Mr. Henshaw Family Quotes

Families are where we get the DNA that makes us look the way we do. The stuff our parents and grandparents pass down to us includes more than just looks, though. Leigh seems to have a personality more like Mom's, too. But in this sentence, we think Leigh is talking about more than that. Is he trying to console himself about just having Mom around?

You could look at a dozen pictures of a dozen families, and they could all look different: a mom and dad, a mom and dad with a kid, a mom with lots of kids, a granddad with a kid. To Mr. Henshaw, Leigh defines his family as split right down the middle, and it's now just a mom and her boy. We don't know for sure, but it seems like Leigh never saw the divorce coming; at least, he doesn't say that. It must have felt like a sudden, terrible jolt.

This is Leigh's simple explanation for the divorce. Of course, people don't get divorced over a truck. The truck just symbolizes the life on the road that Dad wants. It lets the reader know why Mom finally draws the line and decides to divorce Dad. When Dad bought the new truck, it showed her that he'd never give up his wandering lifestyle.

This is a pretty blunt statement, but it gets to the heart of the situation. Divorce is a very physical process. Someone goes this way, and others go that way. There are new living arrangements to make, and everyone has to figure out how everyday life will now look.

In this sentence, Cleary mixes in some humor with the sadness. Mom means that he spent too much time partying at a truck stop outside of their town instead of spending time with his family.

Now that Leigh's family isn't together, both he and Mom have to figure out how their new life will look. This is a big transition—bigger than moving, going to a new school, or having to make new friends. This is something that's constantly in the back of Leigh's mind.

Last Christmas, they were together: Mom, Dad, Bandit, and Leigh. Last Christmas, they were a family. Leigh misses the laughter and singing, and longs for when his family wasn't apart. Holidays can be challenging times for families that aren't together.

After a family is pulled apart, for whatever reason, it takes time for everyone to deal with their feelings about it. People aren't affected in the same ways, but there's usually sadness and anger. Kids can feel helpless when there's a divorce. They didn't ask for it, but they experience the consequences of it. Unless their family was especially terrible or dangerous, most kids wish their parents were back together, at least at first.

It's those day-to-day things that make Leigh miss his dad so much. If Dad was around, maybe he could protect him against some of the bad stuff that's happening to him.

Here's another example of how kids are seriously affected by a divorce that, in most cases, they didn't want and didn't see coming. He's lost his beloved pet, too, and that seems totally unfair to him. He sounds angry.