Books to Help Children with
Grief and Loss

by Melissa Taylor

Photo credit: Monica Murphy, Moment/Getty Images

Death and loss are part of life. As parents, we often struggle to support our children through their grief. Know that reading and discussing picture books on grief and loss can help. It’s just one of the many steps that authors John W. James and Russell Friedman write about in The Grief Recovery Handbook, explaining that “Recovery from grief or loss is achieved by a series of small and correct action choices made by the griever.”

These books deal with grief, not death. None contain religious explanations. Likewise, none of these books use metaphors about death because experts agree that children need the real words — “death,” “die,” “buried” — not euphemisms such as “went to sleep,” “departed,” or “gone home.”