A book can help with
For the child who liked it perfectly well where they were, thank you.
A move is exciting for the grown-ups and often not at all for the children. They lose their bedroom, their friends, the corner shop, the exact spot on the stairs where the light comes in. And because everyone around them is busy and stressed, their sadness tends to come out sideways, as clinginess or crossness or an absolute refusal to pack.
A book gives them somewhere to put it. Stories about moving let a child feel the loss of the old place properly, which matters, and then watch a character slowly warm to the new one. Read in the weeks beforehand, they make the whole thing less mysterious and rather more survivable.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
What actually happens
For the youngest, it’s the sheer strangeness of the day itself: boxes, a van, and a new place to sleep. These make it familiar in advance.
Little Bear goes round the empty house saying goodbye to each room before the family drives away. It gives a small child a ritual for leaving, which turns out to be exactly what they need. Simple and quietly moving, and lovely to actually do on the day.
or on Bookshop.org
Moving day told from the family dog’s point of view, as everything he knows gets packed into a van and taken somewhere strange. Because it’s the dog who’s bewildered, a toddler can look at the upheaval from a comfortable distance. Warm and reassuring about it all coming right.
or on Bookshop.org
Saying goodbye, and hello
At this age the friends and the old bedroom are the loss. These honour that before letting the new place become home.
In two-word rhymes it moves from the badness of leaving, the bad boxes and bad goodbyes, to the slow arrival of good things at the other end. The spareness makes it powerful, and it never pretends the sad part isn’t sad. A perfect one for the week before a move.
or on Bookshop.org
Two best friends spend one last afternoon together before one of them moves, and the ache of it is beautifully done. It’s just as valuable for the child being left behind, which is a side of moving that often gets forgotten. Tender and true, from an award-winning author.
or on Bookshop.org
Starting again
Older children face the harder part: a new school and starting from scratch socially. A fuller story helps.
Peter has moved with his dad to a house beside a dark wood and is frightened, so he builds two guardians out of blankets and pillows to watch over the bridge, and finds a friend. It’s a quietly extraordinary book about making a strange place feel safe. Best at the older end of picture books, and worth having.
or on Bookshop.org
Nyla loves her countryside life and is heartbroken to move to the grey city, until she finds unexpected magic and friendship there. It honours how real the loss feels and then lets colour creep back in. Beautifully drawn and honest about the ache as well as the hope.
or on Bookshop.org
Losing the house itself
An older child understands that a move is not just a different bedroom, it is losing the place their life happened in. Each of these sits with that rather than promising the next one will be better.
Five siblings have eleven days before their landlord turns them out of the Harlem brownstone they have lived in all their lives, and they set about changing his mind. A big, warm, noisy family book in the old style. The house is effectively a character in it, which is the whole point for a child being moved out of one.
or on Bookshop.org
Anna’s family leave Germany overnight and then keep moving, through Switzerland and France and on to England, with her pink rabbit left behind in Berlin. Judith Kerr was writing her own childhood. It is here for what it says about a home you do not get to go back to.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page for saying goodbye to the old house room by room, and planning what the new bedroom might look like. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
The best thing you can do for a child in a move is let them mourn the old place properly rather than jollying them into enthusiasm for the new one. The excitement comes on its own timetable.
So give them a ritual for leaving, let them have some say in the new room, and help them keep in touch with the friends they’re missing. Most children settle within a term, though it rarely feels that way in the first fortnight.
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 uprooting and starting again.
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.