Why I Wrote a Children's Book About Grief

Aug 14

3 min read

Updated: Sep 18

Update: When Daddy Becomes a Star is here! See the book → https://www.sandra-munoz.com/when-daddy-becomes-a-star

This week I get to share something personal. On August 15, my new picture book arrives: When Daddy Becomes a Star, a gentle rhyming story for children ages 4 to 8 who have lost a parent. I wrote it under Fiddleswerth, my children's imprint, with illustrations by Lisa Bohart.

This book is not only clinical for me. My daughter lost her father when she was small, and a moon elf named Fiddleswerth was part of how we found words for it at bedtime. I wrote When Daddy Becomes a Star for the child we were then - and for the parent sitting on the edge of the bed, unsure what to say.

Children do not grieve in paragraphs

Adults process loss in words and conversations. Young children cannot. Their grief shows up sideways - in sleep, in play, in tummy aches, in a question asked at bedtime that stops your heart: "Where did Daddy go?"

When a child asks that, they are not asking for a theology lecture or a biology lesson.

They are asking: Am I safe? Is the love still here? A story can answer those questions in the language children actually speak - image, rhythm, and repetition.

When they ask "Where did Daddy go?"

Here are three honest sentences. Say them slowly, and expect to say them more than once - a young child needs to hear them many times before they settle.

"Daddy died. His body stopped working, and he cannot come back." Plain words. Euphemisms like "we lost him" or "he went to sleep" leave a child watchful and afraid.

"You did not make this happen. Nothing you did caused it." Young children assume they caused things. Say this before they ask, because many of them never will.

"We can miss him together - missing him is one way we keep loving him." This gives the missing somewhere to go, and tells your child they do not carry it alone.

These words matter. But you will need them again next week, and the week after - and that is where a story comes in.

Why a story instead of a script

I write a lot of scripts for parents, and I believe in them. But grief is one place where a script alone is not enough, because the conversation happens over and over, in doses, at the child's pace. Helping professionals call this titration; children call it "read it again."

A book gives the two of you a shared, safe container. The hard thing lives inside the pages, so your child can approach it, close it, and come back - always from the safest place they know: your lap, your voice.

What the book does

It names the loss honestly, in words soft enough for a four-year-old - no euphemisms that confuse ("we lost Daddy"), no pretending.

It shows love changing shape instead of disappearing - the difference between "gone" and "still loving you, from farther away."

It gives the feeling somewhere to go: look up, remember together, ask one more question.

It ends regulated: calm body, calm night sky, an anchor a child can find again any evening - the brightest star.

A note from the therapist side of me

A story is a companion, not a treatment. If your child's sleep, play, or appetite stay changed for a long stretch, or the sadness seems stuck, a children's grief counselor or your pediatrician can walk beside your family. Reaching out is not a failure of love; it is one more form of it.