Norma and her parents are going to her great-uncle Frank's funeral, and Norma is more excited than sad. She is looking forward to playing with her favorite cousin, Ray, but when she arrives at the church, she is confronted with rituals and ideas that have never occurred to her before. While not all questions can be answered, when the day is over Norma is certain of one thing: Uncle Frank would have enjoyed his funeral. This sensitive and life-affirming story will lead young readers to ask their own questions about life, death and how we remember those who have gone before us.
This inspring picture book celebrates the friendship between a young girl and an elderly woman as they plant seeds in a community garden alongside friends and neighbors, waiting for the seeds to flower. By mid-summer, the friends welcome a rainbow of color in the garden and picnics in the sun. At harvest, the young girl's elderly friend is bed-ridden, but jubilant as they share baskets with red tomatoes and snap peas amid the sweet smell of lavender. When the last leaves fall, everything is different. But in the spring, hope arises anew.
Through the lens of a pet fish who has lost his companion, Todd Parr tells a moving and wholly accessible story about saying goodbye. Touching upon the host of emotions children experience, Todd reminds readers that it's okay not to know all the answers, and that someone will always be there to support them. An invaluable resource for life's toughest moments.
Caterpillar crawls from leaf to leaf, eating and waiting, all alone in a big, green world. Then Orange appears--Orange floats, and flits, and flies, graceful and beautiful. In this sweet, moving story of intergenerational friendship, a small caterpillar is befriended by a glorious monarch butterfly, and together they learn to see the world through each other's eyes.
After the loss of her mother, a young girl and her dad find a new way to live with grief with the help of her mom's sweater.
An ordinary day in an ordinary neighborhood turns out to be extraordinary in this story about new life, death, and family.
After her beloved pet dog dies, a young girl finds it very difficult to overcome her feelings of sadness.
Sonya raises her three chickens from the time they are tiny chicks. She feeds them, shelters them and loves them. Everywhere Sonya goes, her chicks are peeping at her heels. Under her care, the chicks grow into hens and even give Sonya a wonderful gift: an egg! One night, Sonya hears noises coming from the chicken coop and discovers that one of her hens has disappeared. Where did the hen go? What happened to her? When Sonya discovers the answers, she learns some important truths about the interconnectedness of nature and the true joys and sorrows of caring for another creature.
A sensitive portrayal of loss and grief, told through a grandchild's inheritance of a stopwatch that belonged to Grampa. In this touching debut picture book about the loss of a beloved grandfather, author Loretta Garbutt explores the stages of grief with a delicate hand. The story opens with our narrator inheriting a stopwatch. For the grandchild, the object carries many cherished memories. "Grampa used to time everything. He timed me when I ran to the end of our street and back. Best speed, 24 seconds." As the year passes, and the seasons change, our narrator slowly moves through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). At first, the stopwatch is a painful reminder of Grampa. But in time, our character finds a special way to honor Grampa and carry forward his traditions.