Childrens Books about Death and Grief
Best Childrens Books about Death and Grief can provide children with a safe space to explore and understand their feelings and can also help them feel less alone in their grief.
Dealing with the loss of a loved one is an incredibly difficult experience, especially for children. However, reading childrens books can be a helpful tool in supporting children’s emotional well-being during these tough times.
You can find these children’s books about death and grief at your local library or through the links provided for your convenience.
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Learn how I talked to my own child when our fish died. Also review these Children’s Books on the Loss of a Pet.
If your child is older, consider Middle Grade Books About Grief and Death.
Death in Children’s Books
Death is a complex and sensitive topic, even in children’s literature.
While some children’s books do address death, it’s typically approached in a gentle and age-appropriate manner, often focusing on themes of loss, grief, and coping.
These children’s books about death and grief can provide valuable opportunities for children to understand and process emotions surrounding death, whether it’s the death of a beloved character or a discussion about the concept of death itself.
Talking To Your Child About Death and Grief
It can be challenging to find the right words to explain death and grief in a way that children can understand.
Childrens books about death and grief can help children navigate the difficult emotions that come with losing a loved one.
Two great books for parents to help support their child through grief include:
The Invisible String Workbook: Creative Activities to Comfort, Calm, and Connect (The Invisible String, 2)
How to Help Children Through a Parent’s Serious Illness: Supportive, Practical Advice from a Leading Child Life Specialist
When handled with care and sensitivity, children’s books about death can help children navigate difficult emotions and develop resilience in the face of loss.
Social Emotional Learning and Grief
Reading childrens books about death and grief can also be an important part of social emotional learning.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) plays a crucial role in helping children navigate difficult experiences like death and grief. When children encounter loss, whether it’s the death of a loved one, a pet, or a character in a book, SEL skills become invaluable in helping them understand and cope with their emotions.
Self-Awareness: SEL encourages your child to recognize and understand their emotions. When faced with grief, children may experience a range of emotions such as sadness, anger, confusion or guilt. Being aware of these feelings and understanding that they are a natural response to loss is an important first step in coping.
Self-Management: Coping with grief requires self-regulation skills. SEL teaches your child strategies to manage their emotions in healthy ways, such as deep breathing, seeking support from trusted adults, or engaging in calming activities like drawing or journaling.
Social Awareness: Social emotional learning promotes empathy and understanding of others’ emotions. When children experience loss, it’s important for them to feel supported and understood by those around them. Teaching children to empathize with others who are grieving helps create a supportive environment where they feel safe to express their own feelings.
Relationship Skills: Strong relationships are a crucial source of support during times of grief. SEL teaches your child communication, empathy and conflict resolution skills that can strengthen their relationships with family members, friends and caregivers, providing them with the support they need as they navigate their grief.
Improve Every Lesson Plan with SEL
Social-Emotional Learning and the Brain: Strategies to Help Your Students ThriveThe Social-Emotional Learning Playbook: A Guide to Student and Teacher Well-BeingSEL for Teachers: A Journal of Social Emotional Learning
Responsible Decision-Making: Finally, SEL empowers your child to make responsible decisions, even in the face of difficult emotions. When coping with grief, children may face decisions about how to express their feelings, when to seek support and how to remember and honor the person or pet they have lost. SEL helps your child navigate these decisions thoughtfully and with compassion.
More Emotional Learning Resources
In today’s fast-paced and dynamic environment, the importance of emotional intelligence is a crucial skill set for personal and professional success for our children.
- SEL & Growth Mindset Lesson Plans
- 25 Calm Down Breathing Exercises for Kids
- Emotions Preschool Activities
- ABC Growth Mindset Cards
- Emotional Intelligence Kit
- Emotions Social Story
- Draw & Write Emotions
- Emotional Regulation Starter Kit
- Embracing Emotions with Yoga
- ABC Calm Down Cards
- Emotional Regulation Strategies
These emotional learning resources foster emotional intelligence, empathy and self-awareness.
By integrating SEL into discussions about death and grief, you as an educator or caregiver can provide your child with the tools and support they need to navigate these challenging experiences in a healthy and constructive way.
Best Children's Books about Death and Grief
With over a million copies sold, this accessible, bestselling picture book phenomenon about the unbreakable connections between loved ones has healed a generation of readers.
Parents, educators, therapists, and social workers alike have declared The Invisible String the perfect tool for coping with all kinds of separation anxiety, loss, and grief. In this relatable and reassuring contemporary classic, a mother tells her two children that they're all connected by an invisible string.
2017 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards Winner
From the perspective of a young child, Joanna Rowland artfully describes what it is like to remember and grieve a loved one who has died. The child in the story creates a memory box to keep mementos and written memories of the loved one, to help in the grieving process.
When something sad happens, Taylor doesn't know where to turn. All the animals are sure they have the answer.
With its spare, poignant text and irresistibly sweet illustration, The Rabbit Listened is about how to comfort and heal the people in your life, by taking the time to carefully, lovingly, gently listen.
This gentle story provides satisfying answers for a young child’s most difficult questions about what happens after this life, inviting “little cubs” to find comfort in knowing that God Gave Us Heaven.
Something Very Sad Happened is intended to be read to two- and three-year-old children to help them understand death and process the loss of a loved one.
Since the two- to three-year-old child cannot read, this story is intended to be personalized; certain words are color-coded in red to cue to you to substitute with the appropriate names and pronouns for the person who died.
A gentle and moving story about losing a friend, and the importance of always expressing your love.
Elfie and her owner grow up together, but growing up can mean having to say goodbye to the ones you love. This tender story is a perfect way to make the topic of loss a little less scary for kids (and grownups).
This loving story follows two cats through their days, months, and years until one day, the older cat has to go. And he doesn’t come back.
This is a poignant story, told in measured text and bold black-and-white illustrations about the act of moving on.
Why Do I Feel So Sad? is an inclusive, age-appropriate, illustrated kid's book designed to help young children understand their own grief.
The examples and beautiful illustrations are rooted in real life, exploring the truth of loss and change, while remaining comforting and hopeful.
For over 25 years, families have used When Dinosaurs Die to explain death, dying, and coping with grief and loss.
Straightforward and comprehensive, this indispensable book is a comforting aid to help young kids and families through a difficult time in their lives.
When the death of a relative, a friend, or a pet happens or is about to happen... how can we help a child to understand?
Lifetimes is a moving book for children of all ages, even parents too. It lets us explain life and death in a sensitive, caring, beautiful way. Lifetimes tells us about beginnings. And about endings. And about living in between.
A beautiful, honest portrait of loss and deep friendship told through the story of two iconic polar bears.
Ida, Always is an exquisitely told story of two best friends—inspired by a real bear friendship—and a gentle, moving, needed reminder that loved ones lost will stay in our hearts, always.
The beloved classic from a New York Times bestselling author has helped thousands of children and adults come to grips with life and death -- a warm, wonderfully wise, and strikingly simple story about a leaf named Freddie.
Appropriate for all ages -- from toddlers to adults -- and featuring beautiful nature photographs throughout, this poignant, thought-provoking story follows Freddie and his companions as their leaves change with the passing seasons and the coming of winter, finally falling to the ground with winter's snow.
All the woodland creatures — Mole, Frog, Fox, and Rabbit — love old Badger, who is their confidante, advisor, and friend. When he dies, they are overwhelmed by their loss. Then they begin to remember and treasure the memories he left them.
Written in rhyme, and using real language to describe real events, When Someone You Love Has Died is a secular children's picture book that gently walks children through a traditional experience they may encounter after the death of a loved one.
When Someone You Love Has Died validates your child's observations and feelings, while also providing strategies to support their ability to cope and to grieve.