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.

Read Your Genre

I write middle-grade fiction, but it has been a long time since I was in that age group. So should I stick with my own generation during my reading time?

No way. Not only do I enjoy middle-grade fiction on its own merits, but reading it helps me improve my own work. That’s true for genre, too.

The age of the intended audience is a category, not a genre. Middle-grade fiction covers many genre, from fantasy to mystery to horror to historical. People who write for children should read books at that age level as well as in the same genre. But the point is the same for both.

Since I write historical fiction, I read adult historicals as well as middle-grade ones. And I read middle-grade fiction in other genres, as well. This provides multiple perspectives, but mostly it helps me understand what my readers want.

It can even help me find my way around a roadblock.

I don’t believe in writer’s block. When the writing gets hard, I force myself to keep working. Most of the time, the ideas start flowing again fairly quickly, although they sometimes take a different route than I had originally planned. But once in a very long while I get so stymied on a particular story that I set it aside without knowing if I will ever pick it up again. That’s what happened with a book I was going to write about the Pullman strike. I set it aside and moved on to my next idea, which had the ideas flowing faster than I could write them down. And the next project on my list is gaining that same momentum long before I am ready to work on it.

But after that, I may go back to the book about the Pullman strike. And how did I get around the roadblock? By reading (or rather listening to) The Strangers, a middle-grade fantasy by Margaret Peterson Haddix. And it did it simply by reminding me that an author can add life to a book by using multiple point-of-view characters with different perspectives. It also didn’t hurt that the oldest POV character is a boy.

So far, all of my POV characters have been girls. But the idea forming in my mind has twelve-year-old twins as the POV characters, and one of them is a boy. That challenges me to see the world through male eyes and sets up a conflict between the twins as they support opposing sides during the strike.

Reading within your genre (or in this case, audience age level) can tell you what stories and writing styles attract your audience. But those books can also spark ideas.

From time to time I hear people say they don’t read what they write. I’ve even tried that myself.

But reading within your genre can only make you better.

Copyright Bullies

Last week I talked about the importance of copyright in encouraging creativity, and I commended Penguin Random House for the wording it used on a copyright page. But not all publishers are that polite and insightful. In fact, some are downright copyright bullies.

As I mentioned last week, the copyright law’s fair use doctrine ensures that copyrighted works can be borrowed—within limits—to promote knowledge. “Fair use” is a complicated concept designed to ensure that information can be shared without impairing an author’s basic right to control the use of his or her material. Additionally, certain materials are in the public domain, which means there are no use restrictions whatsoever.

Publishers who try to deny you these uses are copyright bullies, and I have ranted about them before. With minor changes, this post is a reprint of one I originally wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium on April 24, 2013 and reprinted on this blog on September 15, 2014.

Copyright Bullies

These days we hear a lot about children and teens who bully their classmates. We also hear about the copyright police—the ones who remind bloggers and middle school music pirates to honor copyrights. But we rarely hear about the copyright bullies.

Copyright bullies are those publishers who try to scare us out of using their materials for any purpose whatsoever (with the sometimes exception of book reviews). The law reserves certain rights to the public, but these copyright bullies and their lawyers don’t want us to know that.

Many books have this warning in the front: “No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.”

Wrong. There are a number of what the law calls “fair uses,” and brief quotations in printed reviews is only one of them. To make a general and far too simplistic statement, a fair use is one that takes a short excerpt and uses it in a way that transforms or complements the copyrighted material rather than replacing it. You can find a detailed discussion of fair use in my book, Writers in Wonderland: Keeping Your Words Legal (KP/PK Publishing 2013), which is available from Amazon and other retailers.

Then there are those works that have been around so long that copyright laws no longer protect them. These works are in the public domain. People can use public domain materials any way they want, although they should attribute the source.

I found the most flagrant attempt at copyright bullying in a book that compiles several of Lewis Carroll’s works—all of which entered the public domain decades ago. In that book the warning states: “No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or stored in an information retrieval system of any kind, without the prior permission in writing from [Publisher], except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.”

Huh? All the material in that book is in the public domain, which is where the publisher got it from in the first place. The reader is free to copy at will without worrying about copyright infringement.

We should all be careful not to violate copyrights, and some warning is necessary.

But don’t be intimidated by copyright bullies.

Copyright Champion

I recently looked for the copyright date in a book published by Viking, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House. Instead of the normal copyright warning, it made this statement:

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

I agree.

Some people argue that copyright inhibits creativity and knowledge by restricting what people can copy, but those people are wrong. First, I don’t understand how anyone can think that copying is creative. And boiled down to its basics, that’s all copyright restricts others from doing. So how can it inhibit creativity when the only activity it prohibits is the very antithesis of creativity?

Copyright is protected by the U.S. Constitution precisely because it encourages creativity. It isn’t a reward: it’s a bribe. It isn’t wages for an author’s or artist’s finished work: it’s motivation to start working in the first place. In other words, a writer doesn’t receive the copyright because he deserves it. He gets it as an incentive to keep writing.

Second, the law’s fair use doctrine ensures that copyrighted works can be borrowed to promote knowledge. “Fair use” is a complicated concept that is beyond the scope of this post, but I will cover it briefly next week.

Although I am a strong proponent of copyright protection, I do believe that the law can be improved. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to give authors the exclusive right to their works “for a limited time” but lets Congress decide what that time is. Right now, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus seventy years (or for 95 years for certain works where the legal “author” isn’t a known individual). I think that’s way too long. Copyright shouldn’t end with the life of the author since that penalizes writers and other artists who are 80 years old or dying of cancer, and they should be encouraged to write, too. But I could easily live with the life of the author plus twenty years and with 40 or 50 years for works without an individual author.

Copyrights foster creativity, and, like Penguin Random House, I support them.

But read next week’s blog post to discover how I feel about copyright bullies.