Bibliotherapy for Bereaved Children: Healing Reading

Children tend to grieve in different ways from adults and therefore they may need alternative strategies to help them through their grief. Many children, lacking the skills to verbalise their feelings, feel embarrassed about discussing loss and react guardedly to one-to-one counselling. A useful guide for carers who are helping bereaved children to understand and work through their grief, this book shows how young people can heal themselves by reading fiction, a process termed bibliotherapy. Eileen Jones demonstrates how a well-chosen book can offer a personal encounter with characters who appear to have experienced similar emotions and how books can be read again and again to provide extended therapy for the bereaved child.   

The author analyses in detail one novel concerning bereavement through the responses of child readers, and reviews a wide range of other useful books. Bibliotherapy with Bereaved Children provides a comprehensive list of children's fiction to help with the process of grief and healing, and is an essential resource for all those living and working with bereaved children.