Grief Lending Library

When her close friend since childhood murders his adoptive parents and kills himself, 17 year old Lynn is haunted by the tragedy.

• Teens

• Suicide

Guidelines for assisting adolescents presently struggling with the difficult issues of dying, death and bereavement.

• Helping Children & Teens

This book focuses on how to help children and teens in the aftermath of a parent’s suicide. The book provides an overview of current thinking/research on suicide and explores the increased risk of mental health issues for child survivors. In addition to information about how children grieve at different developmental levels, it also offers comfort to the bereaved, specific coping strategies for families facing this trauma, and insight into what promotes resiliency.

• Helping Children & Teens

• Suicide

Explores the life of Alicia, a popular sixteen-year-old, in the aftermath of a fatal car crash, as her friends, family members, and others recall key episodes that show her impact on their lives. Includes author’s note about the real Alicia and how she inspired the book, as well as resources on teen grief.

• Teens

• Sudden & Traumatic Death

The author explains how children and adolescents grieve after someone loved dies. For adults who want to help.

• Helping Children & Teens

The Dougy Center and American Foundation For Suicide Prevention created this helpful book discussing children and teen suicide loss.

• Helping Children

A seventeen-year-old boy trying to recover from the loss of his girlfriend meets an unusual girl.

• Teens

• Death of a Partner

This guide provides hundreds of hands-on activities tailored for grieving children in three age groups: preschool, elementary, and teens. Through the use of readings, games, discussion questions, and arts and crafts, caregivers can help grieving young people acknowledge the reality of the death, embrace the pain of the loss, remember the person who died, develop a new self-identity, search for meaning, and accept support.

• Helping Children & Teens

Discusses how to deal with different types of grief, in such situations as death, suicide, romantic break-up, and pregnancy. Includes fictional examples and lists of crisis centers and agencies to provide help.

• Teens

A coming-of-age story about a 12 year old boy who is the sole survivor of a 187 plane crash that kill his brother and parents. This is a beautiful story about the ways a broken heart can learns to love again.

• Teens

• Sudden & Traumatic Death

Ages 9-16. A realistic guide to coping with the stresses and emotions a child or young teen may face when a parent has died.

• Children and Teens

• Death of a Parent

Shows how to respond constructively to any adolescent and to troubled adolescents in particular.

• Sudden & Traumatic Death

• Teens

Simplified and suitable methods for talking to children and teenagers about sensitive topics with an emphasis on the subject of death. Honest but child-appropriate language is advocated, and various wording and levels of explanation are suggested for different ages when discussing topics such as death in general, suicide, homicide, accidental death, the death of a child, terminal illness, pet death, funerals, and cremation.

• Helping Children & Teens

Sixteen-year-old Anne, home from boarding school for the holidays, has difficulty accepting her new stepmother’s presence in the house that holds so many memories of her dead mother.

• Teens

• Death of a Mother

For the first time, a psychotherapist specializing in teen and adolescent bereavement offers a compassionate guide to help you discover your unique coping style, deal with overwhelming emotions, and find constructive ways to manage this profound loss so you can move forward in a meaningful and healthy way.

• Teens

• Death of a Sibling

The author turns her attention to the special needs of adolescents struggling with loss and gives teens the tools they need to work through their pain and grief. Although the circumstances surrounding a death are difficult to handle at any age, adolescence brings with it challenges and struggles that until now have been largely overlooked. Fitzgerald adeptly covers the entire range of situations in which teens may find themselves grieving a death, whether the cause was old age, terminal illness, school violence, or suicide. She helps teens address the gamut of strong and difficult emotions they will experience and the new situations they will face, including family changes, issues with friends, problems at school, and the courage needed to move forward with one's own life.

• Teens

Ideal resource for parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, teachers, coaches and others who want to help a teen in grief.

• Helping Children & Teens

Even if children or teenagers you love appear to be doing "just fine" after a loss, the truth is, they may be suffering in silence. They may not even know they need your help. Suzy's simple, straightforward, refreshing style makes helping a child both easy and effective. Her approach works to keep misperceptions, isolation, and sadness from permanently affecting the important children in your life.

• Helping Children & Teens

Written to help teens understand and deal with their unique grief. Gives simple, practical ideas and suggested activities.

• Teens

Focuses on ways to assist adolescents as they encounter loss, grief, and death. Some of the foremost experts in the field share their insights on this critical topic. The chapters examine the variety of losses adolescents encounter and offer ways to support both grieving adolescents and adolescents facing their own life-threatening illness. Voices of adolescents are included in their own words, to best articulate both their perspective on loss and the sources of their support.

• Helping Children & Teens

This practical book offers 20 simple rituals that caregivers can use with people with developmental disabilities after a death. All of the rituals can be adapted for people of all age and all levels of disability.

• Professional

• Helping Children & Teens

Learn how a death of a loved one can impact a teen, and how to help. Explains common grief reactions of teenagers, specific challenges grieving teenagers face, when to seek professional help, and advice from other parents.

• Helping Teens

Ages 10-13. Children speak openly, honestly, unreservedly, of their experiences and feelings

• Children and Teens

• Death of a Parent

Through the description of personal experience, and case studies, the book explores how people with autism feel and express the loss of a loved one, how they process and come to terms with their feelings of grief, and offers practical and detailed advice to parents and caregivers on a range of sensitive issues. 

• Professional

• Helping Children & Teens

For children ages 4 and up. At her grandmother’s beach cottage, Annie reveals her father’s sexual abuse of her to a dove who helps her heal and learn to trust again. Lists guidelines for adults to help sexually abused children.

• Children and Teens

• Abuse

A teacher’s experience in pioneering courses on death and dying for junior students.

• Helping Children & Teens

Ages 6-13. A warm, sensitive story of how one little boy is encouraged and supported to find his own way to remember his best friend. Written in simple, honest language, and the warm, expressive watercolors tenderly express the sensitive story of children’s friendships.

• Children and Teens

• Death of a Friend

A stunning debut about one girl's journey through loss and grief. She dares to bare her innermost fears, hurts, and wishes, and even allows herself to have a flowering crush on a boy in the school band. She also finds out deep secrets about her mother which she never knew. It's a year that will change Corinna's life forever.

• Teens

Since his mother was killed in the line of duty in Iraq, Derrick is building a doomsday shelter to prepare for the apocalypse when he makes friends with Misty, the girl next door.

• Children and Teens

• Death of a Parent / Military

Discusses various issues that children and adolescents face before, during, and after the death of a loved one. Also touches on the dying child. Topics that are discussed include developmental perspectives, children’s hospice care, sibling loss, loss of a parent, loss of a friend, and loss experienced by military children.

• Helping Children & Teens

A compilation of writings each dealing with how we can better help children and adolescents cope with grief and loss, including pieces written by grieving children themselves.

• Helping Children & Teens

This book brings together diverse fields of study and offer a practical as well as multifaceted theoretical approach to how children cope with death. Using stories of children’s own experiences supported by data from a large research study, Silverman explains the wide range of effects of loss upon children, the challenges they face as they grieve, and ways of supporting them as they change and grow in the bereavement process.

• Helping Children & Teens

Grades 6+. Spells out the warning signs, guides teens through the steps of reaching out to a friend, and explains when and how to seek help. It also suggests ways for teens to help themselves when they are feeling stressed or depressed.

• Teens

• Sudden & Traumatic Death / Suicide

Simple, direct, “straight from the heart” information about what a teenager can expect from the grieving process.

• Teens

A reader friendly guide to helping children. Includes: supporting grieving children and teens, signs of grief in children and teens, what you can do, teachable moments, and taking care of yourself. Information that will help parents and their grieving children.

• Children

A reader friendly guide to helping children. Includes: supporting grieving children and teens, signs of grief in children and teens, what you can do, teachable moments, and taking care of yourself. Information that will help schools when a death in the classroom occurs.

• Children

• School Resources

Provides both parents and teens with the help they need. Shared are teen stories, feelings, techniques, references and resources for use in not only surviving but thriving after the painful loss of a family member or close friend.

• Teens

The facts about suicide, warning signs to watch for, and when and where to go for help.

• Sudden & Traumatic Death

• Suicide / Helping Teens

Using true-life examples and a personal style, this book offers solid, compassionate help to grieving teenagers. The special problems associated with suicide are also discussed.

• Teens

A self-help guide for teenagers who are struggling with bereavement and the emotional difficulties it presents. This book provides an overview of grief as a painful but normal process, offering insights from bereavement experts as well as practical suggestions for coping with loss, including accounts from teens. This book closes a gap in the available literature on grief and bereavement that has tended to focus on adults and younger children. It provides a warm, accessible resource that will reassure teen readers about the normality of grief, encourages their understanding of what happens during the grief process, and provides an indispensable resource guide.

• Teens

"Takes the great unknown of death and tells it as it is. Feelings hurt but feelings shared are feelings diminished."

• Teens

• Suicide

Activities promote healing when they are offered freely and when the children and teens can choose their level of participation. Activities don't heal; they create an atmosphere of warmth, comfort and safety, which allows the child and teen to work through the healing process. The goal of these activities is to promote the sharing of feelings, to normalize the grief experience and to encourage peer support.

• Professional

Teens grieve differently from adults and often get lost in the shuffle after the death of a loved one. Weird Is Normal When Teenagers Grieve is unique because it is a self-help book for grieving teens written by an actively grieving teen. Author Jenny Lee Wheeler lost her father to cancer when she was fourteen and validates for her peers that they have the right to grieve in their own way and according to their own timetable, that their grief attacks might be different from those of adults around them, and that they aren't going crazy if they see signs from their loved one.

• Teens

Teenagers will find many ideas for helping themselves when a friend has died. The author's gentle advice validates a loss that has often gone unacknowledged.

• Teens

• Death of a Friend

When Nothing Matters Anymore defines and explains adolescent depression, reveals how common it is, describes the symptoms, and spreads the good news that depression is treatable. Personal stories, photos, and poetry from teens dealing with depression speak directly to readers' feelings, concerns, and experiences.

• Teens

An activity book for a child and their caregiver to do together to help facilitate grieving a death together.

• Helping Children & Teens

A collection of stories by young teens who have experienced the death of a sibiling

• Teens

• Death of a Sibling

This book will help children see how much god loves them and how God works through people to provide comfort and hope. They are not alone in feeling afraid.

• Teens