Eleven years later, a look back at the saddest children’s books

By Christine Yunn-Yu Sun

On January 26, 2011, I published an article titled “The Saddest Children’s Books,” recommending some of the books that help young readers understand and express their grief. Eleven years and seven months later, this article came back to me right after my previous review appeared in this column. This review was for the children’s book Pink Punk Mum, written by Queensland author Kala Heinemann and published on May 23 this year.

I read about the book on April 3 and found it. My review was written on August 17, went to press on August 24, and published on August 30. Then, on September 1, I learned the sad news that Mrs. Heinemann passed away in June, after losing her battle with cancer.

The news struck a chord as I was still trying to come to terms with the loss of my mother-in-law on August 26. With my own family on the other side of the world, she was like a mother to me in Australia. I had felt and still feel his generous love on a daily basis.

Now, I can’t help but think how easy it was for me to write in this review about the importance of having open and honest conversations about life-threatening illnesses. How easy it used to be to talk about the need to deal with what is lost while sharing a sense of belonging and being with those left behind.

At first, I had seen grief as a personal and private thing. Even within the same family, each member’s memories of their lost loved one are unique, and each can only retreat to their own “dark room” to process them, such as imprinting life’s precious moments on paper.

Then my own article came to mind, and I realized that these children’s books are sad for me because I read them as an adult. For example, only those who are themselves parents can truly understand the messages conveyed in books such as Love You Forever (1986) by Robert Munsch and The Giving Tree (1999) by Shel Silverstein.

And it makes sense that only those who fought for their loved ones and then lost them could understand the sense of disappointment and despair expressed in Chris Raschka’s The Purple.

Balloon (2007) and Michael Rosen’s Sad Book (2008) by Michael Rosen

Ultimately, I guess growing up is a process of learning to discuss death and loss in a “factual” way, as Rosen described it. It’s a process of getting used to the idea of ​​feeling sad but having to pretend to be happy.

Unlike children, whose expressions can be short, sharp and direct like a punch in the face, adults often have to hide their tears. Nobody likes to see a grown man or woman bawling their eyes out.

Perhaps that’s why, as adult readers, we need the saddest children’s books. They offer us a rare chance to openly shed our tears, without having to feel embarrassed or ashamed, so that we can free ourselves to process our deepest and most cherished feelings afterwards.