A book can help with
For the child who needs to believe that better days are coming.
Sometimes a child needs no particular lesson, just the sense that things get better. After a hard stretch, a loss, a move, a long illness at home, hope is the thing that’s run low, and it can’t really be argued into them.
A book can carry it in quietly. A story where things are dark and then slowly lighten leaves a child with a shape in their mind for how bad times end. These are the ones to read simply because they’re hopeful, no discussion needed afterwards, no point to draw out.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
After the dark bit
For little ones, hope is best shown rather than explained: a bad time on the page, and then the light coming back.
What happened to Humpty Dumpty after the fall? He was frightened of heights, and had to find his courage again, and the ending is a genuine surprise and a joy. It’s a beautiful story about getting back up after something has broken you, and it works for a child who’s had a knock of any kind. One of the loveliest picture books of recent years.
or on Bookshop.org
A star falls out of the night sky and a little girl takes it home, wraps it up, reads to it and mends it, until it is well enough to go back. It is gentle and quietly magical, and it leaves a child with the sense that broken things can be cared for and get better. Lovely at bedtime after a heavy stretch.
or on Bookshop.org
Light after dark
Older children can hold a longer story where things are genuinely hard before they get better. These leave a child lifted.
Tomas finds a strange tree in his grandad’s garden that grows dragons, and what follows is warm, funny and full of the sense that wonderful things can turn up in an ordinary life. It’s pure delight, and delight is its own kind of hope. Good for a child who needs cheering after a heavy stretch.
or on Bookshop.org
Mary is orphaned, sour and lonely when she arrives at a bleak house, and slowly a hidden, neglected garden brings her, and a very unwell boy, back to life. It’s the great children’s story about things coming right again after grief and isolation. A wonderful read-aloud, and hopeful right to the last page.
or on Bookshop.org
Something worth doing
Hope at this age is less a feeling than a decision to act when the odds look poor. Each of these gives a child somebody who does something rather than waiting for things to improve.
April is taken to a research station on Bear Island for six months and told there are no polar bears left, and then she meets one, starving and stranded. Her plan to get him home is entirely impractical and she does it anyway. Beautiful, and honest about the climate without ever turning into a lecture.
or on Bookshop.org
Annemarie is ten in occupied Copenhagen when her best friend’s family have to be hidden and moved, and she ends up carrying part of it herself. Based on the Danish rescue of almost all the country’s Jews. Tense in places, and the hope in it is entirely earned.
or on Bookshop.org
Book links are Amazon affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. More on this.
Something to do together
A page for looking forward: the things to come, the things worth waiting for, and one small good thing about today. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
You can’t talk a child into feeling hopeful, but you can read them stories where the dark bit ends. Over time that builds a quiet expectation that hard stretches finish, which is most of what hope actually is.
So read these for pleasure rather than for a lesson, and let the hopefulness do its work without pointing at it. And if the flatness lingers for weeks, or your child seems to have lost interest in everything they used to enjoy, do have a word with your doctor.
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 who need to believe things get better.
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.