Picture Books about Grief and Death

We are so excited to have Susan Claus join us today to share information about Children’s Picture Books about Grief and Death.

Susan Claus is a children’s librarian, writer, and illustrator from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is happiest outside on slightly rainy days. Susan makes sure to let her inner child out every day to play.

“Anyone old enough to love is old enough to grieve.” Alan Wolfelt

The Reference Question Librarians Dread

It happens about once a month. A family comes into the library. The parent shoos the children off to look at the fish tank or the guinea pig, comes up to the reference desk, then leans in close and asks me a barely audible question. I know the signs and am already pulling up one of two booklists in my head: books on Where Babies Come From; or books about Death. 

If it’s Death, the book request is usually very specific. Most often, death of grandparent or death of a pet. Less often, more heartbreakingly, the death of a parent or sibling.

Picture book authors have tackled the subject of grief and death from many different angles: Death of a Grandparent, Death of a Pet, Death of a Parent, Death as a Part of Life, How to Remember Someone Who Died, Funerals. Few picture book authors seem willing to tiptoe into the minefield of theories about the afterlife.

Parents and caregivers should introduce some of the following books about death and grief into the reading life of young children BEFORE they have a personal reason to need them. Picture books give children a scaffold on which to build their knowledge of the world, and that includes how to think about, or talk about, death and loss. 

The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrated by Christian Robinson

ISBN 978-0-06-028931-7

An unsentimental classic that perfectly captures children’s fascination with funerals for small animals.

Badger’s Parting Gifts by Susan Varley

ISBN 0-688-02699-0

A gentle story about a community of animals grieving for their friend Badger and comforting each other by remembering all the things they learned from him. Varley portrays the end of the elderly badger’s life in a hopeful and happy way that children can easily understand, without preempting a parent’s role in explaining belief in an afterlife.

Mom’s Sweater by Jayde Perkin 

ISBN 978-0-8028-5544-2

Told in the first person by a girl living with the loss of her mother, the varied emotions of sadness, anger, and even jealousy play a part in her grieving process. She learns that grief may not ever go away, but life will get bigger around the grief, and she will be able to handle it.

Cry, Heart, But Never Break by Glenn Ringtved, illustrated by Charlotte Pardi 

ISBN 978-1-59270-187-2

Beautifully illustrated in watercolors, this Danish story has black-robed Death as a visitor to a household headed by an ailing grandmother. The children ply Death with coffee to try and keep him from taking their grandmother but come to realize that far from being an evil monster, “Death’s heart is as red as the most beautiful sunset and beats with a great love of life.”

The Phone Booth in Mr. Hirota’s Garden by Heather Smith, illustrated by Heather Wada 

ISBN 978-1-4598-2103-3

Set in Japan, this is the story of one community’s creative way to grieve together and heal after losing loved ones to a tsunami.

My Nana’s Garden by Dawn Casey, illustrated by Jessica Courtney-Tickle 

ISBN 978-1-5362-1711-1

A gentle rhyming story that uses the continuity of seasons in a garden as a metaphor for death as a part of life.

Psychological Aspects of Grief in Young Children

Children process death and handle grief differently than grownups do. Preschoolers may know the word “dead,” but they are unable to understand that death is a permanent condition. They know the person or pet is gone but expect them to come back at any minute. A loved-one’s absence is an inconsolable loss, whether they are gone forever or just went to the store.

Sometimes sadness at a loss takes a backseat to the anger that grownups around them are preoccupied or that schedules are disrupted. [As a kindergartner in November, 1963, the country may have been in mourning and glued to the broadcast of the Kennedy funeral, but I was a cranky mess because The Mickey Mouse Club had been preempted.]

Young children have a short “sadness span.” Even children old enough to understand the permanence of death cannot maintain focus on a sad event for very long. Without long years of life experience, children have a limited capacity to endure emotional pain. Pain is too painful. They deal with it in little chunks of time. They grieve a bit, then put the sad away and play a bit.

Young children also lack the vocabulary to understand or express what they’re feeling, partly because adults have a hard time talking about death and grief with children. Also high on the list of things adults would rather have a root canal procedure than talk to kids about? Sexuality and Finances.

Resources for Information about Children and Grief

Child Mind Institute: childmind.org/guide/helping-children-cope-with-grief/ and childmind.org/article/helping-children-deal-grief/

Highmark Caring Place: Highmarkcaringplace.com/cp2/grief/grievingchildren.shtml

Center for Loss & Life Transition: www.centerforloss.com

Thanks so much for joining us, Susan!

You can find Susan here:

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