Let me be straight with you before you scroll, because the heading over this shelf is wrong. Four of these five books are not about illness at all. They're about disability — a mother who uses a wheelchair, a baby born with Down syndrome, a grandfather who is blind, a girl with cerebral palsy — and disability is not an illness, it isn't going anywhere, and nobody in these books is waiting to get better. The illness that IS here is dementia, in two of them, and it's a grandfather in both. So: if someone in your family is disabled, or if a grandparent's memory is going, this shelf is for you. If someone you love has cancer, or is in hospital, or is going through treatment, please go to When Someone You Love Is Sick instead — that shelf was built for you and this one wasn't. Mama Zooms is a good place to start if you're not sure, and it's the one with nothing at all to brace for.
I have to explain the shelf before I recommend it, because the label on it is a mistake and I don't want you walking into that. This was collected as an illness shelf. It isn't one. Mama Zooms is a joyful book about a mother whose wheelchair is her son's zooming machine — she is not sick, she is not sad, and the book would be baffled by the suggestion. We'll Paint the Octopus Red is about a baby brother born with Down syndrome, which is a chromosomal condition, not a sickness. In As Brave As You a grandfather is blind from glaucoma, and the actual weight of that book is a dead uncle and a family that stopped speaking. Only two books here have an illness in them and it's the same illness both times: The Remember Balloons, where a grandpa's memories drift away one balloon at a time, and Roll with It, where Ellie has cerebral palsy — that's the disability — and her grandpa Jonah has Alzheimer's, which is the illness. Those two are the pair, one picture book and one novel, and they belong together. Why does the distinction matter enough for me to spend a paragraph on it? Because a child who is told that Mama's wheelchair is like being sick will wait for her to get better. Calling a disability an illness teaches a child to see a person as broken and temporary, and these books are all, in their different ways, arguing the exact opposite. So match them to the child in front of you: Mama Zooms for a little one, Octopus for the big sister or brother, Balloons for a grandparent who's forgetting, and the two novels when there's more reading in them.