Eight picture books for the week your animal died, or the week you know is coming. This is a shelf, not a course — you are not meant to read them all. You need one. Pick it by which animal you lost, by how your child is actually behaving, and by what your family believes happens next, and then leave the other seven alone. What they have in common is that the animal dies in all of them and none of them pretend otherwise.
The fastest way in is to answer three questions. Which animal? A dog is 'Saying Goodbye to Lulu' if she was old, 'The Forever Dog' if it was sudden. A cat is 'The Tenth Good Thing About Barney'. Something small — a mouse, a hamster, a gerbil, the class fish — is 'Goodbye Mousie', and don't let anyone tell you a mouse is too small to be a real grief. How is your child behaving? Furious is 'The Forever Dog', where Mike is angry at the dog itself for breaking a promise. Refusing to believe it is 'Goodbye Mousie'. Stuck and silent months later is 'Saying Goodbye to Lulu'. Needing something to hold at three in the morning is 'The Invisible Leash'. And what does your family say happens next? That question decides more here than anything else, so it has its own heads-up below. Two of these eight answer it with God. Six don't. The one thing this shelf will not do is choose for you. 'Jasper's Day' is the hardest book on it and belongs to one specific week — read its own note before you order it. And 'Dog Heaven' and 'Cat Heaven' are the same book with a different animal in it, so buy the one that matches yours and skip its twin.