A book can help with
For the missing bear at bedtime, and the pet who didn’t come home.
To a grown-up it’s a toy. To a child it is a person, and losing it is a real bereavement, with real weeping and a real hole at bedtime. The same goes, more so, for a pet: for many children the death of a dog or a hamster is their first meeting with loss of any kind.
A book takes it seriously, which is exactly what a child needs when the world around them is saying we’ll get you another one. These stories sit with the sadness, give it words, and gently show that missing something is what loving it looks like afterwards.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there. If you’ve lost a person rather than a pet, the page on death and grief has gentler books for that.
The lost bear
For the very youngest it’s usually a toy, and the loss is total. These take it as seriously as they should.
Dave loses his beloved toy dog, and the whole family feels it, until his big sister does something quietly heroic to get him back. Shirley Hughes understood exactly how enormous a lost toy is to a small child, and the ending is one of the great acts of sibling kindness. A perfect, much-loved book.
or on Bookshop.org
A little bear is lost at sea and journeys back towards the girl who loved her, in a story about a treasured toy going missing and the sadness that follows. It acknowledges the grief of it rather than brushing it aside. Beautiful to look at, and gently hopeful.
or on Bookshop.org
When a pet dies
Often a child’s first real loss. These are honest that the animal isn’t coming back, and warm about remembering.
In spare black-and-white pictures and very few words, an older cat teaches a younger one everything, and then one day goes away and doesn’t come back. It handles a pet’s death with extraordinary simplicity, and the last page is quietly hopeful. A Caldecott Honor book, and one of the kindest on the subject.
or on Bookshop.org
Mog the cat dies at the start, and stays around to watch her family grieve and then welcome a new kitten, in Judith Kerr’s matter-of-fact and comforting way. Because children know and love Mog, it lands as gently as such a thing can. A lovely, honest book about a much-loved animal dying.
or on Bookshop.org
Carrying the sadness
Older children can take a longer story about loss and about coming out the other side of it.
Evan and his dog do everything together until the dog dies, and in his grief Evan lets his beautiful garden go to ruin, until something starts to grow again. It’s honest about anger and neglect as part of grieving, and hopeful without hurrying. A Caldecott Honor book and a wonderful one for this age.
or on Bookshop.org
When Zack’s dog dies, a friend tells him about the invisible leash that still connects them, which gives him something to hold onto. From the author of The Invisible String, it offers comfort in a form children can picture. Good for the child who needs to feel the bond hasn’t simply vanished.
or on Bookshop.org
The thing that was theirs
By eleven a child can lose something and understand properly that it is not coming back, which is harder than simply being upset about it. Neither of these hurries anybody through that.
Peter is made to release his pet fox at the roadside when his father goes off to war, and regrets it within a day. The chapters alternate between the boy walking three hundred miles back and the fox waiting for him. There is a war, a mother who has died and a father with a temper, so it is not a light read, but it is a beautiful one.
or on Bookshop.org
Benny’s father has filled the house with things he cannot bear to throw out, the council are threatening to condemn it and his mother has gone. What Benny is losing is the ordinary life he used to have. Funnier than that makes it sound, and clear-eyed about hoarding.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page for drawing or writing about the pet or toy that’s gone: the funny things, the favourite things, and one thing you’d like to say to them. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
Try not to rush past this one. A lost toy or a pet that has died is often a child’s first proper grief, and how it’s met teaches them something about whether sadness is allowed in your house.
So let them be sad for as long as they need, resist replacing the thing straight away, and make room for remembering. And if a pet has died, being honest that they aren’t coming back, gently and plainly, serves a child far better than a story about a farm.
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.