Two new books have recently been published dealing with children and bereavement. “Missing Mommy: A Book About Bereavement” is by Rebecca Cobb. Its target audience is preschool to primary grades. It is written in a first-person narrative by a young boy who has lost his mother. Cobb has stated that adults sometimes use “ambiguous language” when discussing death with a child. In her opinion, this can be confusing to children. She uses a direct approach as the father explains that the boy’s mother cannot come back. Cobb is also the illustrator, and she puts a lot of emotion in the faces of the family. The grief that the family feels is real, but so is the certainty that they will survive and be hopeful again.
An import from Norway is “My Father’s Arms Are a Boat. Written by Stein Erik Lunde its target audience is primary-grade children. Lunde takes an indirect approach to the topic of death. As the little boy struggles to go to sleep, the father comes to comfort him. When the child asks if his mother will every wake up again, the father changes the subject. He asks if they should go out and look at the stars. When they return to their home, the warm glow of the fireplace reassures the family and the reader that “everything will be all right.”
Loss of any kind is difficult to discuss when a child. These two new books offer two different approaches. Both in the end comfort the fictional children and the readers.