4 Children’s Books To Treat Death With Children
Dealing with death with children is not an easy task because, if it is already a complicated time for adults, even more so for the little ones.
The moment of explaining what has happened, what are the best words for it, and then managing the loss of that loved one are some of the most difficult issues to deal with.
Choosing the right words for adults is sometimes very complicated, and even more so if it is a very close loss that older people must also manage and assume.
Books to discuss death with children
A good tool to manage in a different way, but at the same time simple, and that can help children to understand the loss from their point of view are books.
Although it seems that death is a taboo subject, several children’s books talk about it with the total naturalness with which it is necessary to express oneself on the subject, both with adults and with children.
Next, we leave you a series of special books for this subject so delicate and important to deal with.
1. Empty
Anna Llena, author of The Color Monster, the best book par excellence for working on emotions with children, returns to publish an illustrated album characterized by having very little text but with illustrations that do not need words, as they are shown by themselves .
The story centers on Julia, on a day when she feels a great emptiness. That great emptiness makes a hole in his body through which all kinds of sad and bad things slip. But Julia, no matter how hard she tries to cover the void with a plug, none of those who lend her serve her.
At the end of the story, Julia realizes that what is really important is that the plug finds it herself and comes from within. In this way, Anna Llenas focuses on resilience, the ability of people to take the blows that life sometimes offers, and also the ability to learn to live with them.
Because of its illustrations, this book is recommended for children ages five and up. Although it is true that the complexity that the metaphor that the author makes with Julia’s emptiness may include may not be understandable for children of this age.
2. I will always love you
Managing and assuming losses, absences and the pain felt by them does not only happen when a human being dies. In many homes, and for many people, pets are an essential part of their life and family, as if they were another person.
This book, precisely, is this type of loss that deals with: the Elfi dog, her owner’s best friend since he was a child, grows up and dies before this one.
A simple story that wants to leave a message behind its pages: expressing affection to the people around you will be the best way to live calm and happy when they leave.
I will always love you is recommended for children from six years old and it is a different way of treating death with children through pets.
More books to discuss death with children
3. Forever
This title refers to what we previously talked about about treating death with children as a taboo subject. Recommended for the smallest of the house from three years old, through their history they will be able to know the cycle of life and how death is another fact of this.
The beauty of this book is at its end and in the reflection they make on the loss, because they want to tell us that, no matter how much people leave, they will always remain in the hearts and memories of others.
4. Jack and death
Through the protagonist of the story, Jack, a child who has locked up death so that his mother remains with him always, the importance of how life must take its course and how death is natural and also necessary will be shown.
The idea that Jack and Death wants to show through its pages is that for there to be life, death also has to be present.
