WHEN SOMEONE YOU KNOW DIES
Story by Patricia St. John
Illustrated by Jason Ramasami
Day One & 10 Publishing. 35 pages. £1.00
ISBN 978 1 909 611 856
Much as we would want to protect young children from some of the harsher realities of life, there are situations and times when death rears his ugly head even at the nursery window. It is extremely difficult to explain death to a very young child; until they actually lose someone they love that way, they can have no concept of its strangeness, its finality and its pain, nor would you want them too.
Until then, even to children systematically taught scriptural truth, death is just a word. For many years there have been secular storybooks to help children understand and come to terms with the idea of death – John Burningham’s Grandpa is one such – and there has been some Christian material which broaches the subject, but not a lot for the younger primary age-group.
