Explaining Death to Small Children: I Miss You by Pat Thomas & What's Heaven? by Maria Shriver

We just lost my dear aunt last month to cancer. She was very close to us, and even babysat Ricky for the last year and a half when I started working part-time. So Ricky was pretty close to her. I wasn't quite sure how to explain death to him - he just turned 4 - and with all the craziness, my mother-in-law was sweet enough to pick out some books about death and mail them to me to read to Ricky.

I Miss You: A First Look at Death by Pat Thomas is a great book for kids ages 2-6. It was the perfect book for Ricky - short, sweet, and had loads of pictures. It reaffirmed what he was experiencing: loving someone, not seeing them anymore, and missing them. At a very high level it mentions how everyone is born and everyone dies, how you attend a funeral, and the feelings a child may have when losing someone. The loved one in the book was an older female - could be a grandmother or an aunt, but obviously everything in the book is applicable to losing any kind of loved one. It acknowledges that cultures deal with death in various ways and it does not focus on any specific religious belief. I strongly recommend this book for little kids who lose someone they love.

I felt that What's Heaven? by Maria Shriver was above Ricky's head. It is more appropriate for a 6-8 year old audience. It is long, very descriptive, and you need a really good attention span to benefit from it. Also - with the heaven thing - it's pretty Christian. We only got to page 2 and Ricky was already asking to read something else. Maybe if he were a little older, things would have been different. In any case, this book will be useful when he is older and has questions about death and heaven.

In any case, it's great to have books to address all kinds of things - from potty training to death. My parents never read me any books to explain anything - other than puberty!