It is Children’s Grief Awareness Week. This week aims to highlight the experiences of young people and children who have experienced a bereavement, to raise awareness of the organisations that can help when children experience loss, and what the wider public can do to support them. The theme this year is: What helps? And obviously my response to this is: reading a book about death and loss!
Joanna P.A. Moore has written Love is the Gift: Supporting children through bereavement, which is an apt read for this week. The book aims to support parents and children aged 6-11 to process difficult feelings that arise when confronted with the loss of a loved one. Moore was inspired to write ‘Love is the Gift’ after the death of a very significant and influential person in her life in 2017. Also living with a rare life-threatening autoimmune condition ‘Addison’s Disease’ and having two small children at the time, Moore felt that there was not enough literature out there to support her own children through the difficult feelings surrounding death. The book is illustrated by Nina Mkhoiani.
Love is the gift is about a mermaid, Alana, who is told her grandmother is dying, and subsequently has to process the death of her beloved grandmother. In this short story, Alana experiences many emotions, including anger, whilst trying to make sense of the fact that her grandmother will disappear from her life.
The story is written in rhyme, and emphasises the importance of love and being loved. It’s cadence makes it suitable as a lullaby or bedtime story.
“My name is Alana and I live in the sea,
where the Mer people wander, spirited and free.
This place is all magic,
with beauty and sparkle.
Alluring attractions of enchanted sea marvel.
There are fish of all colours, corals and reefs,
but even right here we must learn to grieve”
— Love is the gift (2022, page 1)
Both the illustrations and the words will hopefully spark conversations between parents and children, about loss and grief. I think this story can be comforting for many, and a great starting point for many reflexive conversations. How to cope with grieve is something that is typically not taught to people, big and small, so having resources like this can fill this gap.
Moore does speak of ‘souls’ and ‘spirits’ and Granny is out there somewhere in the ‘heavens above’ which are metaphors that might not appeal to all. I personally wished that when Alana was told her grandmother had died more direct language would have been used than ‘Granny has left us and she has gone to the sky’, but I also appreciate that the rhyming format lends itself to more poetic and metaphorical phrases.
But my opinion is not the most important one, what matters most is whether this story and the illustrations will appeal to children. Their brains still have the wonderful ability for much more magical thinking and creating narratives, an ability which sadly many adults lose. I think the drawings of mermaids and the sea will appeal to a lot of little people – I know I would have likely found them mesmerizing as a child – and it can definitely help them think through some very difficult thoughts and feelings.
To learn more about Joanna P.A. Moore visit her website.
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