By Robie H. Harris
A boy goes to wake his pet mouse and Mousie won't move. He's sure it's only sleep. His father tells him the mouse has died.
A small boy goes to get his mouse up in the morning, and Mousie won't move. He tells his father Mousie is sleeping. His father says Mousie died. The boy says no, he's just sleeping, and that goes back and forth for a while, because that's how it goes. Then he gets furious at Mousie for dying, and then he cries, really cries. After that, because he's four, he throws himself into the funeral like a project. They find a box. He puts in carrots and a bit of jam toast and a couple of toys so Mousie has things. He decorates the box with wiggly stripes. They bury it in the yard, make a headstone out of driftwood, and say goodbye. On the last page he's lying on the floor spinning Mousie's exercise wheel, and he says maybe someday he'll get another mouse. That's the ending. No one talks him into any of it.
It moves at a four-year-old's speed and in a four-year-old's order: no, then yes but I'm angry, then sad, then busy. Longer books make grief a slow tide. This one is short and jerky and honest about the fact that a small child can be flattened by loss and then absorbed in decorating a box eleven minutes later. The father is the model here. He doesn't argue the boy out of the denial and doesn't dress anything up. He just says died, and he stays. And it's a mouse, which matters. When a hamster or a gerbil or a fish dies, a child is often told in a hundred small ways that it isn't a big deal, and this book takes the mouse entirely seriously.