A shelf for a child whose mom or dad is locked up. You pick the one that fits your child's age and the part they're actually struggling with. Visiting Day is a good place to start if you're not sure, it's the warmest and it puts the love before anything else. But if your child needs the practical facts about visits and sentences, or is the one whose mother is away, or has started deciding who at school gets told, there's a different book here for each of those. Nothing on this shelf explains anyone's offense, and nothing here decides what your child should feel.
Choose by your child's age and by which part is hurting. Visiting Day is a good place to start: it's told through a girl's own loving eyes, the getting-ready and the fried chicken come first, and the prison arrives without fanfare, so a child meets the love before the fact. The Night Dad Went to Jail is the opposite kind of book on purpose, the one that hands over information, the arrest, the glass, the metal detector, the sentence, for a child asking what happens now. Far Apart, Close in Heart is a dozen children instead of one, so a child with two moms, or a parent inside for the second time, or siblings split across foster homes, can find their own page. Knock Knock never says prison at all, which makes it the one for a child who isn't ready to have it named. Mama Loves Me from Away is for the child whose mother is the one away, and for the grandmother doing the driving. Ruby on the Outside is the only novel, and it's about the secret rather than the missing, which is the problem that shows up around ten. Read the one that's theirs, and read it more than once; finishing the shelf was never the point.