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Books & Information
Books

Many bereaved parents find solace in reading about loss to better understand what is happening to them and how others have coped with loss.  There are many titles in this section, contributed by parents and other concerned friends. 

 

Selected titles are provided with support from the National Reading Movement. For more reading materials, do check out the National Library Board's NLB Mobile app.  More titles on Coping with Grief (for various age groups and chosen by NLB) may be found here.

Guide Books For Bereaved Parents

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  1. When the Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter  Judith R. Bernstein, Ph.D.

  2. After the Darkest Hour, the Sun Will Shine Again: A Parent’s Guide to Coping with the Loss of a Child  Elizabeth Mehren

  3. The Bereaved Parent  Harriet Sarnoff Schiff

  4. The Worst Loss: How Families Heal from the Death of a Child  Barbara D. Rosof

  5. How to Survive the Loss of a Child  Catherine M. Sanders

  6. When a Baby Dies  Jill Worth

  7. No Time to Say Goodbye  Paul Arnott

  8. Empty Cradle, Broken Heart. Surviving the Death of Your Baby  Deborah L. Davis

  9. The SIDS Survival Guide - Information and Comfort for Grieving Family and Friends and Professionals Who Seek to Help Them  Joani Nelson Horchler and Robin Rice Morris

  10. Help, Comfort & Hope after Losing Your Baby in Pregnancy or the First Year  Hannah Lothrop

  11. When a Baby Dies. The experience of late miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death  Nancy Kohner and Alix Henley 

  12. I Will Carry You  Angie Smith - Written by a Christian woman who continued a pregnancy after receiving a terminal diagnosis at 18 weeks. Religious but not judgmental 

  13. Healing a Parent’s Grieving Heart- 100 practical ideas after your child dies  Alan Wolfelt

  14. Trying Again. A Guide to pregnancy after miscarriage, stillbirth and infant loss  Ann Douglas and John Sussman

  15. Finding Hope When a Child Dies – What Other Cultures Can Teach Us  Sukie Miller

  16. After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss Through the Years  Ann K. Finkbeiner

  17. Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child  Ellen Mitchell

  18. The Death of a Child  Peter Stanford 

  19. The Grieving Garden - Living with the death of a child  Suzanne Redfern & Susan K. Gilbert

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General Bereavement Guide Books

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  1. When Mourning Breaks: Tales of Hope and Healing  Anthony Yeo - Singapore 

  2. How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies  Therese A. Rando, Ph.D.

  3. “You’ll Get Over It”. The Rage of Bereavement  Virginia Ironside

  4. The Courage to Grieve: Creative Living, Recovery & Growth Through Grief  Judy Tatelbaum

  5. To Heal Again: Towards Serenity and the Resolution of Grief  Rusty Berkus - Short soothing statements with dreamlike illustrations

  6. Learning to Live Again: A Practical, Spiritual Guide to Coping with Bereavement  Rita Rogers (Rogers is a well-known psychic practicing in England. She gives compelling stories of putting parents in touch with their deceased children, helping them resolve some of their most painful grief issues.)

  7. Grieving the Loss of a Loved One: A Devotional Companion  Kathe Wunnenberg - a Christian guide

  8. Innocent Voices in My Ear  Doris Stokes - An English psychic, famous in the 1970s and 1980s, writes about her special relationship and psychic communications with children and those who died young

  9. How to Survive the Loss of a Love  Melba Colgrove,Ph.D., Harold H. Bloomfield,M.D., & Peter McWilliams

  10. A Time to Grieve - Meditations for healing after the death of a loved one  Carol Staudacher

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Personal Accounts for Coping With the Loss of a Child

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  1. A Broken Heart Still Beats  Anne McCracken & Mary Semel - This is a collection of pieces by famous people -- writers, politicians, actors, other public figures both real and fictional – describing how they experienced the death of their child.

  2. Give Sorrow Words  Tom Crider - A one year diary following the death of his grown daughter in a fire

  3. Lament for a Son  Nicholas Wolterstorff - Account of feelings and thoughts after losing a teenage son in a climbing accident

  4. Touching the Edge  Margaret Wurtele - Account of healing process after losing her only child, a grown son

  5. Paula  Isabel Allende

  6. A Grief Observed  C.S. Lewis - A short but moving and expressive account of grief following the death of his much beloved wife

  7. A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss  Jerry L. Sittser - A heartrending account of grief and healing following a car accident which killed his child, his wife and his mother

  8. Living on the Seabed  Lindsay Nicholson - A deeply moving and beautifully written memoir of this British journalist's loss of both her husband and daughter

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Philosophical Approaches to Understanding Loss

 

  1. Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying  Stephen & Ondrea Levine

  2. Life Lessons: How our Mortality can Teach us about Life and Living  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler

  3. The Wheel of Life  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  4. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying  Sogyal Rinpoche

  5. No Death, No fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life  Thich Nhat Hanh

  6. The Journey Home: What Near-Death Experiences and Mysticism Teach us about the Gift of Life  Phillip L. Berman

  7. Healing Grief  James van Praagh

  8. Transcending Loss  Ashley Davis Prend, A.C.S.W.

  9. When Things Fall Apart - Heart advice for difficult times  Pema Choldron

  10. Broken Open - How difficult times can help us grow  Elizabeth Lesser

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Miscellaneous

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  1. Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, his Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy that Changed both their Lives  Dr. Brian Weiss 

  2. Life After Life  Raymond A. Moody 

  3. Death’s Door: True Stories of Near-Death Experiences  Jean Ritchie

  4. Words of Comfort  Edited by Helen Exley - Little hardcover booklet containing collection of grief poems 

  5. When Your Friend’s Child Dies – A Guide to Being a Thoughtful and Caring Friend  Julane Grant

  6. The Christmas Box  Richard Paul Evans

  7. A Heartbeat Away - Finding hope after grief and loss  Flappy Lane Fox

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Helping Children Cope with Grief

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  1. On Children and Death: How Children and their Parents can and do Cope with Death  Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

  2. The Kid’s Book about Death and Dying By and for Kids  Eric E. Rofes and the Unit at Fayerweather Street School

  3. I Will Remember You: A Guidebook Through Grief for Teens  Laura Dower

  4. What on Earth Do I Do When Someone Dies?  Trevor Romain - Guidebook written for young children answering their most common questions

  5. Sad Isn’t Bad: A Good-Grief Guidebook for Kids Dealing with Loss  Michaelene Mundy

  6. The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story of Life for All Ages  Leo Buscaglia, PhD 

  7. Lifetimes: A Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children  Bryan Mellonie & Robert Ingpen

  8. Badger’s Parting Gifts  Susan Varley 

  9. No Matter What  Debi Gliori - For preschool children

  10. Someone Special Died  Joan Singleton Prestine - For very young children

  11. Shooting Stardust  Frrich Lewandowski - Story for young children told by a boy whose brother died

  12. Balloons for Trevor  Anne Good Cave - Story of a boy who loses his best friend, told for school age children

  13. When Someone Dies  Sharon Greenlee

  14. Jack’s Journey  Laura Harris, M.Div, MSW & Steve Dawson M.Div, LCSW

  15. Water Bugs & Dragonflies – Explaining Death to Young Children  Doris Stickney

  16. When Dinosaurs Die – A Guide to Understanding Death  Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown 

  17. The Sky Dreamer  Anne Morgan - A beautiful picture book fantasy story, written by a bereaved mother, to help children experi-encing grief after the death of a loved one

  18. The Angel with the Golden Glow  Elissa Al-Chokhachy - Good for subsequent children after losing a child

  19. Tear Soup  Pat Schwiebert RN, Chuck Dekleyn - A storybook about grief written like a children’s picture book but helpful for people of all ages

  20. We Were Gonna Have a Baby, but We Had an Angel Instead  Pat Schwiebert RN - A good children’s book about pregnancy loss or loss at time of birth 

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Materials available from The Child Bereavement Trust, UK

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  1. Caring – For you when your baby dies - A comprehensive and general booklet guide written by a bereaved mother in the UK, with Jenni Thomas of CBT. Excellent advice and information.

  2. Memories - A booklet with spaces for photos, foot and hand prints etc. Sections in the booklet allow for information of the lost child and for others to write “special words”.

  3. This is about me - A workbook designed to help communicate difficult information to children when a parent (or prime carer) is terminally ill. Especially for 4 – 14 year olds

  4. My book about me - A workbook designed to help children with a life-threatening illness understand their feelings and so lessen their fears and help them to cope.

  5. My Book About Our Baby that Died - A workbook for children

  6. Grieving - after the death of your baby - A book to accompany the video (“When Our Baby Died”) – aimed at helping families to find ways of expressing their grief and remembering their baby

  7. The CBT Children’s Activity & Information Pack - A pack to accompany the video (“Someone Died – It happened to me”) – full of information about children and grief, together with suggestions and ideas of things children can do to help them express their feelings. Included in this activity pack are notebooks to write thoughts; a balloon and a label to send a message; special stickers for writing or drawings; a glove puppet pattern and a book with information on losing somebody dear

  8. Benedict – A child of mine - A small book of poems written by Alexa Warden, a bereaved mother.

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