By Todd Parr
A fish is missing the friend it lived with, and this bright, very simple picture book walks a young child through the feelings that follow a loss. It never says who the other fish was or what happened, which is what lets it fit so many kinds of loss.
One orange fish. The green fish it lived with is gone, and the book never tells you why, not on the first page and not on the last. Instead it moves through the feelings one at a time, a single one per spread, in Todd Parr's thick black outlines and loud, bright colors. You might not want to talk about it. You might want to pretend nothing happened. You might not feel like eating, or you might get really, really mad. You might have questions nobody answers. Then it turns: someone will listen when you want to talk, it's okay to cry, it's okay to feel happy again, and you'll always have your memories. Thirty-two pages, maybe eighty words, done in about four minutes.
It's the one for a three-year-old, and for the first terrible days, before the questions start and when nobody in the house can manage a book with facts in it. It asks nothing and explains nothing. It just names the feelings a grieving child may be having and says each one is allowed, including the ones that are hard on you: the not-talking, the not-eating, the anger. Parr's colors carry a lot of it, so a page can name an awful feeling and still leave the room brighter than it found it. It's also the one to reach for when you can't get through a page yourself. You can read it aloud in a wrecked voice and it still works.