Death, Dying and Grieving
books for children & parents

A young boy grieves the loss of his best friend and thinks about how things would be if he were still alive.

After his beloved grandfather's death, a boy realizes that his grandfather is still with him in all the special places they shared.

When their teacher, Miss Perry, is killed in an automobile accident, her elementary class students take turns sharing their memories.

When a sick boy dies, his friends and classmates remember him by building a schoolyard pond in his memory.

After her grandmother passes away, a little girl misses her terribly. But when spring arrives, the sight of the purple flowers she and her grandmother planted makes her smile again.

When Jim's dog is killed, the other first graders experience with him his natural reactions to death.

When her dog Lulu dies, a girl grieves, but then continues with her life.

JP
DePaola

A small boy enjoys his relationship with his grandmother and his great-grandmother, but he learns to face their inevitable death.

After a long life of chasing squirrels, licking ice cream cones, and loving his adoptive family, an old dog comes to the end of his days.

When a little animal's grandmother dies, he remembers good times with her and asks his mother about death.

A boy grieves for his dead pet Mousie, helps to bury him, and begins to come to terms with his loss

In the moments after grandmother has passed away, her spirit is at peace as she says goodbye to her sleeping family and her home.

Neighborhood children imaginatively stage funerals for dead bugs, but they experience real sadness following the death of a pet.

After the death of one of his seven cats, an old man finds how much he misses his cat as he goes about the activities of each day.

A family, including a child who is dying, sews together a quilt of its memories and love.

While celebrating the Days of the Dead, a young Mexican girl remembers her wonderful grandmother who sang songs, made tortillas, chased monsters away, and loved butterflies.

Presents the phenomena of grief and loss and the concept that death is not the end.

After the death of his wife, an old man gradually realizes that making the soup she used to cook and sharing it with friends eases his loneliness.

When Francie's Great-Granny Annabel dies of Alzheimer's disease, Francie finds a way to help people remember the real person rather than the shell she had become as the disease ran its course.

Grieving over her father's death from cancer, a young girl celebrates their last year together by making a book that includes mementos and a story.

On her many walks with her grandfather, a young girl learns to appreciate life and deal with death.

Children ask different adults and themselves about death and get a wide variety of answers.

Hippo and Monkey are best friends. When wise old Hippo dies, Monkey is very sad until Chameleon helps him remember the stories he and Hippo shared.

God created Cat Heaven, with fields of sweet grass where cats can play, kitty-toys for them to enjoy, and angels to rub their noses and ears.

God created Dog Heaven, a place where dogs can eat ice cream biscuits, sleep on fluffy clouds, and run through unending fields.

A child remembers special moments with Mama and starts to feel better after grieving over her death.

The wishing tree seemingly grants every wish Ming makes, but it does not make his grandmother get well again.

Badger dies, but lives on in the memories of those who loved him.

In an attempt to overcome his grief, a boy tries to think of the ten best things about his dead cat.

JP
Weigelt

All the animals in the forest must deal with the death of their old friend, Bear, when he goes to sleep and never wakes up.

Because Old Pig knows that her time to die is near, she puts her affairs in order and takes a slow walk with Granddaughter to savor the beauty for one last time.

Pa Lia and her classmates share memories of Stinky Stern, the second-grade bully.

A Navajo girl unravels a day's weaving on a rug whose completion, she believes, will mean the death of her grandmother.
(Newbery Honor 1972)

A prank ends in tragedy, and a boy must learn to live not only with the loss of a friend, but with the feeling that he could have prevented it.

Classic story about the friendship of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider. Charlotte teaches Wilbur much, including that all life must end. (Newbery Honor 1953)

When his best friend drowns while they are both swimming in a treacherous river that they had promised never to go near, Joel is devastated and terrified at having to tell both sets of parents the terrible consequences of their disobedience. (Newbery Honor 1987)

Having had a near-death experience in the accident that killed his younger sister, eleven-year-old Will tries to cope with the situation by writing her letters.

Twelve-year-old Ben must cope with the loss of his father, who died the year before, and his mother's over-protectiveness when he enters the annual Striped Bass Derby on Martha's Vineyard.

Gina relives events that preceded her angry, hostile, older sister Elaine's senseless death, as her family struggles with their grief and Gina faces the added pressures of starting middle school.

Sixth-grader Grace, her mother dead and her only sister ill with diabetes, learns to be brave like the pirate queen Grace O'Malley, whom her Irish cousin says she resembles.

Billy James tries to come to terms with the sudden death of his best friend, and learns about himself, his family history and life in his small hometown in the Ozark mountains.

After the death of his grandmother, ten-year-old Spoon observes the changes in his grandfather and tries to find the perfect artifact to preserve his memories of her.

Three years after the death of her mother, eleven-year-old Maddie finds a note attached to a popped balloon, leading to a correspondence with a mysterious fourteen-year-old girl who helps Maddie understand that life must go on.

Nine-year-old Johanna and eighty-two year-old Cousin Ruth try to help their family heal after the accidental death of Johanna's younger brother.

Grieving for their dead mother, twelve-year-old James and his younger sister Sary find healing in their affection for a stray dog.

Taking care of a baby left with them at the end of the tourist season helps a family come to terms with the death of their own infant son.

Twelve-year-old Luke's summertime adventures along the river are haunted by the memory of his older brother Robert, who died being a daredevil in the same place a year and a half earlier.

Eleven-year-old Edwina confronts old and new challenges when her longtime best friend Sally faces the inevitable death of the grandmother who raised her.

Thirteen-year-old Phoebe recalls her younger brother Mick and his death in a bicycle accident.

The life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm. (Newbery Winner 1978)

Uprooted following the death of their father, nine-year-old Vinnie and her five-year-old brother, Mason, cope in different ways--one in silence--but both with the help of Lupe, the flip-flop girl.

Mandy's life changes when her twin sister eats a hamburger tainted with E. coli and dies.

In "conversations" with her dead mother, fifth-grader Livvy records her adjustment to living in Baltimore with a woman she had never met, and she comes to see the wisdom of her mother's choice as she gets to know the woman's large, loving family.

Through his friendship with an elderly woman and her granddaughter, Josh comes to terms with his brother's death.

Undecided souls who have died while they are not quite ready to go to heaven find themselves in the halfway place known as the Heavenly Village.

After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living. (Newbery Winner 1993)

During her long recovery from a crippling accident, Charley finds a wild dog. In the process of training him, she begins to explore her feelings about her mother's death two years earlier.

Tessa is keeping a secret about her older brother's death in a drunk-driving accident. She must come to terms with both her grief and her guilt before she can regain the close relationship she had with her mother.

Ever since her mother died six years earlier, twelve-year-old Dilly and her father spend every summer in upstate New York at Mummie's farm, even though Dilly resents how her dead mother continues to intrude on her life.

When fourteen-year-old Rachel reads the journal of her brother, who died when she was seven, she learns secrets that help her understand her parents and herself.

Resettled in the "Bomb City" with her mother and brother, Davey Wexler recovers from the shock of her father's death during a holdup of his 7-Eleven store in Atlantic City.

Grieving for her beloved father who recently died, thirteen-year-old Sierra remembers special moments in their lives, including their interest in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Although thirteen-year-old Willa Jo and her Aunt Patty seem to be constantly at odds, staying with her and Uncle Hob helps Willa Jo and her younger sister come to terms with the death of their family's baby. (Newbery Honor 2000)

Zinny struggles to accept herself and looks for a way to come to terms with the death of her beloved Aunt Jessie and her feelings of responsibility for that death.

J / Fiction
Creech

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left. (Newbery Winner 1995)

Thirteen-year-old Isabel, a girl living on the island of Guam, and her family try to cope with the suicide of Isabel's mother.

Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.

A thirteen-year-old girl struggles to cope with the loss of her beloved older brother, who disappeared four months earlier off the coast of Cape Cod.

During the summer her grandfather is dying of leukemia and death seems all around, 15-year-old Vicky finds comfort with the pod of dolphins with which she has been doing research.
(Newbery Honor 1981)

After discovering her grandfather is dying, fifteen-year-old Rachel gets to know him better than ever before and finds the experience bittersweet. (Newbery Honor 1989)

Dual perspectives reveal the aftermath of seventeen-year-old Michael MacKenzie's birthday celebration during which he discharges an antique Winchester rifle and unknowingly kills the father of high school classmate Jenna Ward

Trav, Kate, and Buck make up a trio during their freshman year in high school, but their special friendship may not be enough to save Trav as he pressures himself relentlessly to succeed, in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of his parents and the world.

After graduating from a private high school in Baltimore, Annie comes to terms with the loss of her sister who had been murdered two years earlier.

J / Fiction
Smith

Rain Is Not My Indian Name

Tired of staying in seclusion since the death of her best friend, a fourteen-year-old Native American girl takes on a photographic assignment with her local newspaper to cover events at the Native American summer youth camp.

When Skylar goes to summer school and tentatively begins to make some friends, she finally starts to get over the loss of her older sister and its terrible effects on the whole family.

Twelve-year-old Amelia feels secretly responsible for her father's death in a plane crash a year earlier. Her life is turned upside down when a newly religious ex-convict claims to have seen Amelia's father in a vision and moves in with Amelia and her mother.

A new friendship with a boy who is both attractive and intelligent helps fifteen-year-old Sophie sort out her feelings about her younger brother Erhard, who died three years earlier, her self-centered older sister, and her distant father.

As she begins high school, fourteen-year-old Carolina tries to come to terms with the deaths of her father and older sister, while dealing with difficult relationships with her mother and best
friend and a budding romance with the boy next door.

Explains in simple language the feelings people may
have regarding the death of a loved one and the
ways to honor the memory of someone who has
died.

Two friends who lose parents, one suddenly in an accident and one by illness, learn to deal with their grief.

Explores the feelings of frustration, sadness, and loneliness that a youngster may feel when a pet dies.

After her great-grandmother's death, a young girl learns about heaven by asking her mother all kinds of questions.