The Heart and the Bottle

Oliver Jeffers is a master storyteller. Like the girl in this story, when I lost my father, I wanted to build walls to protect myself from the pain of grief so my heart could never hurt so much again. It took time to find a way to open my heart again and continue to find wonder.

Reading The Heart and the Bottle felt like reading my own story, like Jeffers understood me. With sparce text and simple, but poignant, illustrations, Jeffers clearly shows the process of healing from loss.

Quite simply the best book on the subject of bereavement I’ve encountered, and it manages that rare trick of appealing to children and adults in equal measure. It’s poignant without cloying sycophancy. It’s humorous without being asinine. It’s respectful of its subject matter without being overly reverential. Interestingly it bypasses the publisher’s reluctance to end on a sad or downbeat note by dealing with the bereavement at the mid-point, allowing equal space in the narrative to move on to the subject of the healing process, without treating it glibly. The icing on the cake is that it’s also beautifully illustrated… show more.

This is another book that deals with grief, by one of my favourite authors and illustrators. The protagonist loses somebody important to her and as a defense mechanism she locks away a part of herself that she feels was intrinsically linked to the person she lost. It seems like the safest option at first - it’s an easy trap to fall into - but after a few years she eventually starts to miss that part of herself and has to learn to unlock it again with some help. This is a great book for explaining that closing yourself up might… show more.

The Heart and the Bottle tackles an issue that is not only tough but also relevant to every human experience: grief. The story centers around the loss of a grandparent, and how the focal character locks her heart away to protect herself from future pain. The story is sweet and simple enough to be digestible for kids, while still tackling the issue of grief pretty directly. Through both his words and illustrations, Oliver Jeffers weaves a tender tale that I believe will resonate with readers of any age.