Reading as Grief Therapy for Children: Picture Books

My church recently started a grief support group for adults. But although the group itself is limited to adults, some of them have children who are also grieving. Since I write books for children, I volunteered to put together a list of reading materials for parents to use with their grieving sons and daughters.

I used the Internet to find relevant books, but I’m not about to promote something unless I have read it first. As a result, I spent several weeks reading children’s books about loss, and I was selective.

In the next few posts, I’m going to share my choices with you, starting with picture books designed mostly for children ages 4–8. Some of these deal specifically with death, while others talk about loss and separation in more general terms.

Here is my list of picture books for young children who are grieving.

·       The Memory Box: A Book About Grief by Joanna Rowland—A girl is afraid she will forget a loved one who has died, so she makes a memory box to keep that person with her always.

·       The Invisible String by Patrice Karst—During a thunderstorm, five-year-old twins run to find their mother because they don’t want to be parted from her. She assures them that love is an invisible string that will always keep them together. Death is just one of the separations mentioned in this book, which has been used by many groups that deal with children’s grief.

·       Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen—A modern parable about grieving, this book is good for all ages.

·       Badger’s Parting Gifts by Susan Varley—An elderly badger knows he will die soon and tries to prepare his friends. The best gifts he gives them are the memories.

·       The Goodbye Book by Todd Parr—Using fish as subjects, this book talks about how we feel after we say goodbye forever.

·       ida, always by Caron Levis—Two polar bears in the zoo are together constantly until Ida gets sick and dies. The story tells us that Ida will always be with Gus, even after she is gone.

·       Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs by Tomie dePaola—This story tells about the relationship between the author, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother and how he dealt with his great-grandmother’s death.

·       Where Are You? A Child’s Book About Loss by Laura Oliveieri—A young boy learns that loved ones will always be in our hearts and memories, even when we can't see them anymore.

·       When Someone Dies: Find Comfort in Jesus by Julie Stiegemeyer—With a clearly Christian emphasis, this book uses the experiences of other children to show how we can find comfort in Jesus after someone dies.

·       A Hug from Heaven by Anna Whiston-Donaldson—In another book with a Christian emphasis, the person who died talks to the child left behind about ways to cope with his or her grief.

·       My Heart Hurts: A Grief Workbook for Children by Karen Jaggers—This workbook provides activities for children to do after a loved one dies. It is not suited for one sitting but should be spread out over days or weeks.

·       Sun Kisses, Moon Hugs by Susan Schaefer Bernardo—This book about being connected even when apart is especially good for children whose parents are going through a divorce.

If you have young children grieving a loss, check out these books. Next week I will move to middle-grade fiction about death.

2-4-5-6-3-1-7

The other day I was talking to a woman who is reading C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series with her daughter. If I remember the conversation correctly, they started with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because that is the one everyone talks about, but the woman wasn’t sure she was doing it right since those events aren’t the first in the Narnia chronology.

So she planned to read the rest in chronological order. She and her daughter had already started reading The Magician’s Nephew, but I hope I talked her out of continuing that way.

Among Narnia fans, the big debate is whether the books should be read in chronological order or by publication date.

Chronological order puts them this way:

1.     The Magician’s Nephew

2.     The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

3.     The Horse and His Boy

4.     Prince Caspian

5.     The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

6.     The Silver Chair

7.     The Last Battle

If you read them by original publication date, however, they go like this:

·       The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

·       Prince Caspian (1951)

·       The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

·       The Silver Chair (1953)

·       The Horse and His Boy (1954)

·       The Magician’s Nephew (1955)

·       The Last Battle (1956)

Chronologically, that’s 2-4-5-6-3-1-7.

So why does it matter which way you read them? First, certain events create a sense of wonder if—but only if—you have read a previously published book that comes later in Narnia’s timeline. At the end of The Magician’s Nephew, for example, we learn how the lamp-post in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came to be there and where the magic wardrobe came from, but those particulars mean nothing at the time unless you have already read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Then there is the matter of character continuity. There is a character from our world who appears in both The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew, but you don’t make the connection until the very end of The Magician’s Nephew and probably wouldn’t make it even then if that was the first book you read.

If you read them in publication order, however, the four children who entered Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reappear in Prince Caspian. The youngest two show up again in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and this time a cousin tags along unwillingly. That cousin and a friend are the protagonists in The Silver Chair. The Horse and His Boy doesn’t have the same character thread, but by then you are so interested in Narnia that it doesn’t matter. (The original four children do show up in The Horse and His Boy, but they are secondary characters there.) As I mentioned above, we have already met the protagonist from The Magician’s Nephew in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Then all of the characters from our world except one show up in The Last Battle.

C.S. Lewis didn’t object to reading the series in chorological order, and even endorsed it, as you can see in this quote replying to a boy who was having the argument with his mother. (The boy thought he should read them chronologically but his mother disagreed.)

I think I agree with your order for reading the books more than with your mother’s. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote [The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe], I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote [Prince Caspian] as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader] I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published. I never kept notes of that sort of thing and never remember dates.¹

I don’t normally question an author’s take on his or her own works, but I believe C.S. Lewis is wrong. The reader’s wonder and the continuity from one story to the next are stronger if the books are read in publication order.

That’s my opinion, anyway.

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¹ C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, Editors, pgs. 68-69.

Keeping Family Connections Strong

On Friday, we held a memorial service for my older brother in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is where Donald lived and worked for over 40 years, but the closest family in the area is a first cousin twice removed (my cousin’s granddaughter). And we were very grateful she was there when Donald fell at home and lay undiscovered for two days until we asked Paige to check on him.

But I’m also grateful for the close family relationships we have maintained or redeveloped with our cousins over the years. A cousin from my mother’s side and her husband came from Maryland for the memorial service, and two cousins and a spouse from my father’s side came from Michigan. Other cousins from my father’s side wanted to come, but we are an aging group (I am the next to youngest), and health concerns interfered.

As a child, we occasionally had family reunions and visits with my Wagner cousins (my mother’s side), but we only kept up communications with the one cousin who came to Donald’s service.

On the Page side, while I was growing up my family had our closest relationship with the family of cousins who also made it to Donald’s service. That was mostly a combination of location and age—the other cousins who lived in Michigan were much older than my brothers and me. We also felt that we knew our Virginia cousins, who were older but traveled to Michigan once or twice a year and always spent some time with us while there.

But we drifted apart over the years. Then our parents started dying and the Page cousins reconnected at their funerals, and also at the funeral of one of the cousins who died much too young. But a relationship based on funerals alone isn’t a satisfying one, so my younger brother and my cousin Gail made plans to bring us all together at Gail’s house on Topsail Island, North Carolina. We spent about a week together in July 2018 and had a great time reconnecting. The photo at the top of this page shows all of the living cousins.

That was the last chance Donald had to gather with the Page cousins as a group. Some of us had a mini-reunion this past summer, but Donald’s Parkinson’s Disease had taken its toll and he was unable to join us.

I’m very glad that I reconnected with the Page cousins in recent years, and I hope that connection remains strong until there is nobody left to connect with.

God willing, that will be a long time yet.

What Did They Read?

Last week I talked about reading recent books in my genre and targeted age range in order to understand what my audience is looking for. But I also read classic children’s novels or, more accurately, books read by children in former times. Writing for children didn’t become popular until the later part of the 19^th Century, so older girls often read novels written for women.

The protagonists in my historical fiction read a lot. I name actual books that were published in America before the year in which my novel is set, and I prefer ones that are still available today so that a reader can find a copy of the book if it piques her interest.

On the other hand, I try to avoid books that are likely to frustrate my readers. For example, Robin Hood is packed with the type of adventure boys like, but the original version is also filled with archaic language. The Elsie Dinsmore series was written for girls and was popular in its day, but the sermonizing is hard to take. But I wouldn’t know about those issues if I didn’t read the classics myself.

Reading the books my protagonists read also allows me to use them to move the story along. One of my protagonists reads Jane Eyre and decides to write her after-the-fact journal in the same style, giving me a believable reason for using that format. Another protagonist wants to do something her parents have forbidden, and a scene from Pride and Prejudice helps her come up with a successful argument. Again, I wouldn’t have known enough to use these devices unless I had already read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice.

According to Stephen King, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Reading anything is good.

But reading what your characters read is even better.

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Frank T. Merrill drew the picture at the head of this post for the original edition of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. First published in 1868, the illustration is in the public domain because of its age.