Something Very Sad Happened: A Toddler's Guide to Understanding Death

This book really helped my granddaughter. Good buy

This is a great book written in plain language for little kids to kind of get a grasp on what it means to lose a loved one. CAUTION!!! If you, the parent, have lost a parent, this book will make you cry as you read it to your kids! 😭 It really helped our daughter understand why Mommy was so sad.

I bought this book for my 2 1/2 -year old granddaughter after my husband died. She listened, but didn’t grasp the message until she came to my house, asked for him, and he wasn’t here.

Bought this for a friend who has grandchildren after losing her husband. Wonderful book to help small children understand death.

It's a nice guide to talking to your very young children about death. It's a great starting point to have when you are grieving and have to explain to very small children. We needed up not reading it to my little one, but the advice and ideas in it were good. I disagree with the author about a few pieces of advice given, but that's just a personal opinion. In general, it really helped us explain the death of a close family member to our 2 year old. It would also be easy to replace the loved one's name in the book to fit whomever you have lost. Some of the advice we did take has helped our little one understand why the person's we lost is no longer around and can't play.

This book is well written and helped our three-year-old understand what happened when her grandpa passed.She had us read it to her every day for a month, following his passing, and it really helped her through the process of comprehending his passing.

I was gifted other books about grief for kids, but this one is the only one that felt totally appropriate for my 3 year old. These were almost exactly the same words I used to explain when her dad died, and the book is so helpful.

When my six year old son, Victor, passed away, I ordered this book literally while still in the hospital room. We had several children, including a toddler, and we needed words for a grief that is hard to express. The book is easy to personalize (proper nouns and pronouns are bolded so you can easily replace them) and we literally read it to our kids with our son's name and pronouns in it, personalizing it so that our toddler could understand. Children often need repetition to understand abstractions, like "death", and being able to pull this book off the shelf and read and reread it with our family was such a help in an incredibly difficult time. I send it to friends with kids who have losses, and keep a copy or two on hand for local friends. It has been a very helpful resource for our family. Even when we aren't directly reading the book, we quote many of the lines as scripts to answer questions around death and dying for our kids.