Birds of a Feather: A Children’s Story of Love, Loss, and What Came Next, by Tom Crice, illustrated by Ellen Rakatansky, 2018.
The two biggest problems when a child is grieving is that the child’s feelings are often discounted and that adults try to protect the child from feeling pain by lying to them about what happened.
What I appreciate most about Crice’s book is that the child’s point of view is shared when a grandfather dies. It communicates a child’s understanding of death and what losing someone they loved means. I see this book as being read by a parent to a child who is grieving, or the child is reading, and the parent is asking what the child thinks about what is being said on every page. This is the book’s strength because it provides an opening for the child to share their feelings, including feeling the need to lash out and destroy something beautiful.
The book opens up the discussion about death. If we are honest with children when they ask their questions, they will understand what they can and be satisfied. They won’t understand everything that has gone on, but they will understand enough, and they will still trust us to tell them the truth. Listen to their questions and hear what they are saying.
Getting children to share their feelings, and getting adults to tell the truth about death and where our loved ones go, are important matters if we don’t want to mess kids up for the rest of their lives. It’s also important for our health of our society. By how they respond to the death of someone they love, the openness of kids can help us accept the reality of death and express our own emotions.
This is a picture book for children from kindergarten up to grade 4, and from reading ages 5 to 9 years. The illustrations by Rakatansky are warm and inviting.
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On July 15, I was interviewed by Rick Bernardo and Laurie Beth Fitz on their Connections Radio show, AM950, KTNF in Eden Prairie, MN. This was our second conversation about love and loss. Rick is an old friend from the Pacific School of Religion, and Laurie and I really get into the symbolism of Coyote who sees through illusions to get to the truth. We talked about how to survive the loss of a loved one, the role of humor when you are struggling, starting over, living spontaneously, remembering to play, and learning to balance grief with joy.
Doing an interview without knowing exactly what questions you will be asked is like doing improv by taking questions from the audience—you really hope that you can think of something on the spot that will make sense and say something important, or at least be interesting. There is one place in the broadcast where I had to pause for a moment to think. We have video this time, although my image feed has me looking like Max Headroom.
• Hear and download the broadcast at: www.am950radio.com/connections-radio-july-15-2023
• Hear and see videos of this broadcast at:
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