The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS I explored grief and loss in children’s books. I’ve chosen examples to show that execute different levels of intensity communicating death and sensitivity about loss. Margaret Mead asserted that “children who have been told the truth about birth and death will know … that this is a truth of a different kind.” “…And hardly children — those
yet we tell — nor ourselves truths…”
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS Most books for young readers still struggle to validate children’s darker emotions and make room for difficult, complex, yet inescapable experiences like loss, loneliness, and uncertainty. 1
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS But if grief is so disorienting and crushing an emotion for adults, how are unprepared little hearts expected to handle its weight? The little girl cannot, and so she doesn’t.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS Cry, Heart, But Never Break by beloved Danish children’s book author Glenn Ringtved and illustrator Charlotte Pardi, translated into English by Robert Moulthrop.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
He tells them of two brothers named Sorrow and Grief,
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Beyond those shadows, Death tells the kids, lived two sisters, Joy and Delight.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Illustrations show dead Grandma.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Ending on a lighter note about thinking of Grandma every time the window is opened.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS My Father’s Arms Are a Boat (public library) by writer Stein Erik Lunde and illustrator Øyvind Torseter , translated by Kari Dickson.
This tender Norwegian gem tells the story of an anxious young boy who climbs into his father’s arms seeking comfort on a cold sleepless
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS night. The boy asks questions about the red birds in the spruce tree to be cut down the next morning, about the fox out hunting, about why his mother will never wake up again.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS Meanwhile, Torseter’s exquisite 2D/3D style combining illustration and paper sculpture, envelops the story in a sheath of delicate whimsy.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS Bárður Oskarsson The Flat Rabbit
The story, full of quiet wit and wistful wonder, begins with a carefree dog walking down the street. Suddenly, he comes upon a rabbit, lying silently flattened on the road. As the dog, saddened by the sight, wonders what to do, his friend the rat comes by.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
“She is totally flat,” said the rat. For a while they just stood there looking at her. “Do you know her?” “Well,” said the dog, “I think she’s from number 34. I’ve never talked to her, but I
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
peed on the gate a couple of times, so we’ve definitely met.”
“She is totally flat,” said the rat. For a while they just stood there looking at her.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
“Do you know her?” “Well,” said the dog, “I think she’s from number 34. I’ve never talked to her, but I peed on the gate a couple of times, so we’ve definitely met.” With great simplicity and sensitivity, the story lifts off into a subtle meditation on the spiritual question of an afterlife — there is even the spatial alignment of a proverbial heaven “above.”
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
It suggests — to my mind, at least — that all such notions exist solely for the comfort of the living, for those who survive the dead and who confront their own mortality in that survival, and yet there is peace to be found in such illusory consolations anyway, which alone is reason enough to have them.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS If grief is so Sisyphean a struggle even for grownups, how are tiny humans to handle a weight so monumental once it presses down? Poet David Mason offers an Davey McGravy — a lyrical litany of loss for children of all ages. Across a series of poems we meet a little boy named Davey McGravy living in the tall-treed forest with his father and brothers. A few tender verses in, we realize that Davey is caught in the mire of mourning his mother.
THE KITCHEN He walked to where his father stood and hugged him by a leg and wept like the babe he used to be in the green house by the lake He wept for the giants in the woods for the otter that swam in the waves. He wept for his mother in the fog so far away.
The mystery of life and death: GRIEF AND LOSS IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS