A book can help with
For the child learning to carry a loss, and the parent carrying their own.
There are few harder things than helping a grieving child when your own heart is broken too. Children grieve in their own way, in bursts, out of order, one minute in tears and the next asking to play, and they often can’t find the words for the great, strange feeling that’s arrived and won’t leave.
A book can sit with them where words fail. A gentle story about loss tells a child that what they’re feeling is normal and shared, gives a shape to the sadness, and offers a way to remember the person or the pet they love. It also hands you a way in, a reason to sit close and let the questions come as they will.
These are the gentlest, truest ones I know. Do read them yourself first, and take them at your child’s pace. Find your child’s age and start there.
The first loss
The very young don’t understand death as we do, but they feel the absence and the sadness in the house keenly. These simply name the feelings and reassure, in the softest possible way.
Told through a little fish who has lost its friend, this walks a small child through the muddle of feelings that follow a loss, not wanting to talk or eat, and missing someone terribly, and reassures at every turn that it’s all allowed and it will pass. Todd Parr’s bright, simple pages make a heavy subject bearable for the very young. A gentle, kind first book.
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Rabbit fills the woods with music and colour, and when he suddenly disappears, his friends are lost until they find that he’s left them the means to make their own. It handles absence and remembering with the lightest, most beautiful touch, never frightening, always hopeful. Lovely for introducing the idea of loss to a young child.
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Written specifically for two and three year olds, because the author could not find anything pitched that low when her own mother died. Certain words are printed in red so you substitute the right name and pronouns for your own family. From Magination Press, with a proper note for the adult at the back.
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Beginning to understand
Now they can follow a proper story, and the kindest ones show a character grieving, remembering, and slowly finding that love and memory outlast the loss.
Old Badger knows he’s near the end, and when he dies his friends are heartbroken, until, one by one, they begin to remember the gifts and skills he gave each of them while he lived. It’s the gentlest possible way to show a child that someone loved leaves a great deal behind. A classic that families have leant on for decades, and rightly.
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Syd follows his grandad up to the attic and through a door to a beautiful island, where grandad decides to stay, in a tender metaphor for a grandparent’s death. It never spells it out, which lets a child take from it what they’re ready for, and the ending is quietly full of comfort. Beautifully drawn, and much loved for a grandparent’s loss.
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A lyrical list of the ordinary places a child will keep finding somebody who has gone: the breeze, the sunlight on a pillow, a favourite family habit. It never uses the word died, which means it also works for absence of other kinds. Comforting for the grown-up reading it aloud, which is not nothing.
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Sitting with the sadness
Older children can take a more honest look at grief, one that doesn’t tidy the sadness away but sits with it, and shows that it softens with time.
Written after the death of his own son, Michael Rosen sets down, plainly and bravely, what deep sadness actually feels like, the pretending to be alright, the days it’s simply too much. Quentin Blake’s illustrations hold it all with enormous tenderness. It tells a grieving child that even grown-ups feel this, and come through it. One to share thoughtfully.
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After a loss, a little girl tucks her heart away in a bottle to keep it safe, and grows up guarded and grey, until a smaller child helps her let it out again. It’s a quiet parable about how we close ourselves off after grief, and how we find our way back. Best for the older end here, and a gentle way to talk about not shutting the feelings away.
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A fuller story
An older child can take a proper novel that treats loss with real honesty. These are powerful, so do read them first and choose your moment.
Jess and Leslie build a secret imaginary kingdom together, until a sudden tragedy changes everything, and Jess has to find a way to carry it. It’s a modern classic about friendship and about grief that arrives without warning, honest about the shock and the anger as well as the sorrow. A deeply moving read to share with, and talk through alongside, an older child.
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Conor’s mother is very ill, and each night a great tree-monster comes to tell him stories and to draw out the truth he can’t bear to face. Illustrated by Jim Kay, it’s fierce, beautiful and unflinching about the grief that comes before a loss, and the guilt that can come with it. It’s intense and pitched at the older end, so read it yourself first and share it when you feel your child is ready.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A gentle page for gathering up memories of the person or pet a child is missing, the funny bits, the favourite things, a photo or a drawing, to keep and to come back to. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
There’s no fixing grief, for a child or for you, and these books don’t pretend to. What they do is quieter and kinder: they say the sadness is normal, the love doesn’t end, and nobody has to carry it in silence.
So let them grieve in their own bursts and their own order, keep talking about the person you’ve lost, and don’t rush the sadness along. And if you’d like more support, there are dedicated bereavement services for children and families in most countries, and your child’s school or doctor can help you find one near you.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults grieving a loss of their own.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.