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

This book is such a great tool in approaching death and grief with a 2-4 year old. It’s age-appropriate, concise, direct, and, most importantly, adaptable to any death in your child’s orbit. It helps your child connect what they might be observing in you (sadness, anger, crying) to the death that happened. Some reviewers clearly didn’t read the description on Amazon and in the book itself because you take any word written in red and ADAPT IT to fit your situation. Our son’s great-grandmother passed away, so we replaced “grandma” with what our son called her. This was the best purchase we could’ve made and all parents should have this book for when there is a death in their child’s orbit.

My son was just shy of 3 when my mom passed and I didn’t know where to begin. I couldn’t be happier with this book. It explained things in such a simple way that I felt like my son really understood (with some repetition). It validated his feelings and even talked through how mommy would be sad too. It also includes several pages for parents to give comfort and suggest how to best use this book. I would highly recommend this to anyone struggling with a similar situation.

I hope you never need this book, but if you do, it's very helpful. It's easy to swap out names where needed for the person that has died (Grandma is the one printed on the page and happened to be what we needed). The pictures are very focused on a mom and child processing the loss together, however, so if it was Dad who was more impacted, this book might be a little confusing. My son was almost 3 when we first needed to read this book with him and it was very age appropriate.

Got this when my FIL passed away. It’s nice that you can put any family members name and gender in the book as needed. It was one of the tools we used to help my 4 and 2 year old understand death a little more

Sweet book for your little one. After reading so many reviews on how to tell my son about my dad that died, I chose this. My son is 5. It’s a sweet little book but I would say better for younger than him. Perfect for 3 ish year olds. I would recommend this

This book was great when my mom died it explains it well for my 3 year old

Gave this as a gift to a mom who was trying to explain death to her 5 year old son. She couldn’t thank me enough and said the book was really helping the situation.

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.

A really lovely, simple story on bereavement. I particularly love the support for reading this to your child in the front of the book.....and the really helpful advice at the back of the book to help navigate bereavement for the adults.

We just lost my grandmother, and I had no idea how to talk to my 3yr old about death. This book was super helpful, and the fact that it’s so simple and gives simple examples that are age appropriate was great. The notes section for parents and caregivers was super helpful. My son still asks me to read this once in a while, and he’ll will remind me “Gigi died, but we can still see her pictures”

¡Hermoso! Lo que me gusta es que a pesar de que la historia cuenta que es la muerte de la abuelita, las imágenes no lo muestran, lo que permite más la idea de entender la partida de alguien que uno ya no va a ver y también puedes dejar abierto a cambiar a otros miembros de la familia (principalmente si el niño aun no sabe leer).

We lost my mither who had been living with us for most of my son's life. He was turning 4 soon and to find the words to explain why we are sad or angry or why she's not coming home again to someone so young was the hardest thing. In very simple words without talking about heaven or angels we were able to explain to him why his grandmother wasn't coming home again, why there was so many emotions in the house. It is an excellent book and it helped us more than we could imagine.

5 Stars – A Gentle, Thoughtful Way to Help Toddlers Understand Loss This book was exactly what we needed during an incredibly difficult time. It explains death in a way that’s sensitive, age-appropriate, and comforting for toddlers. The illustrations are soft and soothing, and the language is simple yet impactful. My child felt seen and supported, and it opened up a healthy, honest conversation about grief. Highly recommend this for any parent or caregiver navigating loss with a young child.