Why I Wrote a Children's Book About Grief

11 minutes ago
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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.

If you know my work here, you know I spend my days giving parents practical, psychologically grounded tools. So let me tell you why this tool looks like a bedtime story.

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.

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.