Here are 100 books that Cry, Heart, But Never Break fans have personally recommended if you like
Cry, Heart, But Never Break.
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I grew up in downstate New York with my head in a book and my feet wandering the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Now living in the Pacific Northwest, I bring my passion for everyday nature, and my awe at the power of stories to illuminate our world, into my nature writing, personal essays, memoirs, and other creative nonfiction, which like the books on this list explore landscapes of repair, restoration, resilience, and hope. That same passion and joy infuses my work as a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books and as a developmental editor helping other writers bring their words to the page.
Macdonald, an experienced falconer, trains a goshawk while struggling to fathom her father’s death. Reading this book helped me realize how many forms hope can take, not the least being the courage to stare down grief and use it to form a loving relationship with a bird meant for hunting and freedom.
Macdonald took me into the world of falconry and its day-to-day demands, and she introduced me to the writing of T.H. White, a man broken by life and trying (but failing) to become a falconer to a goshawk. This is a beautiful, tragic, uplifting book, raw in emotion but filled with natural and literary history, and one I’ll return to again and again, I’m sure.
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of…
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
In this claustrophobic modern classic, a grieving father and Ted Hughes scholar finds himself haunted by an oily, unnerving, anthropomorphic crow.
I’m a fan of anything Porter writes, but his debut is deserving of the indelible mark it’s made upon the modern literary landscape. The crow is a character like no other, and Porter’s poetry brings this strange and beautiful bird to life.
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Winner of the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.
In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family…
All my life, books have been a safe space for me to explore emotions, recognize that what I’m experiencing is universal, and see that we can cope with difficult situations. As I pursued my MFA in Writing, I studied and wrote books that address heavy topics in hopeful ways. As Matt de la Pena says, “I can’t think of a safer place to explore complex emotions … than inside the pages of a book.” The picture books I have chosen address the heavy topic of loss in sensitive, hopeful, and empowering ways. I hope these books will touch your life as much as they’ve touched mine.
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.
Award-winning picture book star Oliver Jeffers explores themes of love and loss in this life-affirming and uplifting tale.
Once there was a girl whose life was filled with wonder at the world around her... Then one day something happened that made the girl take her heart and put it in a safe place. However, after that it seemed that the world was emptier than before. But would she know how to get her heart back?
In this deeply moving story, Oliver Jeffers deals with the weighty themes of love and loss with an extraordinary lightness of touch and shows us,…
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it…
Grief is something I grew up with. I was a toddler when my infant sister died and it devasted my family. They weren’t able to grieve her death properly because the family code was not to talk about our losses. Now, as a psychologist, I treat patients who are bereaved. Many books have been written about grief, but few focus on what happens to the brain, the heart, and the body of the bereaved. I wrote a book about grief because of my research on the human brain as a faculty investigator at Harvard Medical School, my understanding of grief through my clinical work, my personal life, and my review of the grief literature.
A searing, short memoir translated from French that captures the life-shattering changes that begin for the author as he hears that his wife may be one of the victims of a terrorist attack at a concert she was attending in Paris. Leiris writes how he wants desperately to stay in the present—hoping that his wife is not one of the victims—but the present swiftly changes to the past as he learns that, despite his hope that it was not so, his wife is one of the victims who was killed. Leiris turns to face life with his toddler son without his beloved wife.
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - "On Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate."
On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris's wife, Helene Muyal-Leiris, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in the deadliest attack on France since World War II. Three days later, Leiris wrote an open letter addressed directly to his wife's killers, which he posted on Facebook. He refused to be cowed or to let his seventeen-month-old son's life be defined by Helene's…
Grief is something I grew up with. I was a toddler when my infant sister died and it devasted my family. They weren’t able to grieve her death properly because the family code was not to talk about our losses. Now, as a psychologist, I treat patients who are bereaved. Many books have been written about grief, but few focus on what happens to the brain, the heart, and the body of the bereaved. I wrote a book about grief because of my research on the human brain as a faculty investigator at Harvard Medical School, my understanding of grief through my clinical work, my personal life, and my review of the grief literature.
This book describes observational evidence in non-human animals showing grief-related behavior after one of their own dies. There are captivating anecdotal stories. One: after Honey Girl, a sea turtle is killed on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, her mate climbs out of the water, up onto the beach to a huge photo memorial to Honey Girl. King describes how he parked himself in front of the photo, staring at it for hours. King asks, was this grief in a reptile? She describes how the behaviors of animals who lose a mate or companion are noticeably distressed. These behaviors and what looks like a complex range of emotions in non-human animals suggest that they also experience grief. Charles Darwin acknowledged that grief is among the emotions that have a universal expression and cuts across species.
King’s book helped with my research for chapter one, “The Evolutionary Origins of Grief.”
From the time of our earliest childhood encounters with animals, we casually ascribe familiar emotions to them. But scientists have long cautioned against such anthropomorphizing, arguing that it limits our ability to truly comprehend the lives of other creatures. Recently, however, things have begun to shift in the other direction, and anthropologist Barbara J. King is at the forefront of that movement, arguing strenuously that we can - and should - attend to animal emotions. With "How Animals Grieve", she draws our attention to the specific case of grief, and relates story after story - from fieldsites, farms, homes, and…
All my life, books have been a safe space for me to explore emotions, recognize that what I’m experiencing is universal, and see that we can cope with difficult situations. As I pursued my MFA in Writing, I studied and wrote books that address heavy topics in hopeful ways. As Matt de la Pena says, “I can’t think of a safer place to explore complex emotions … than inside the pages of a book.” The picture books I have chosen address the heavy topic of loss in sensitive, hopeful, and empowering ways. I hope these books will touch your life as much as they’ve touched mine.
When I first brought Boats for Papa home, my son wanted to read it over and over. He even made his own boats and gave them to us with notes filled with hearts.
Boats for Papa is a sensitive, endearing story written and illustrated by the brilliant Jessixa Bagley. Buckley lives on the water with his mother and collects driftwood to make into boats with messages to send to his deceased father. He believes if the boats don’t come back, they make it to his father.
What I love so much about this story is the sweet relationship of a mother and son. As the story progresses, Buckley realizes the boats do come back to shore, but that his mother had been collecting them. He sends out a sweet, final boat with a message for her.
Buckley and his Mama live in a cosy cabin by the ocean. He loves to carve boats out of the driftwood he finds on the beach nearby. He makes: big boats, long boats, short boats, and tall boats, each one more beautiful than the last, and sends them out to sea. If they don't come back, he knows they've found their way to his papa, whom he misses very much. In this stunning debut, author/illustrator Jessixa Bagley explores the subtle and deep emotions associated with loss in a heart-warming tale that is sure to stay with the reader long after…
Jera Fowler is hardly excited about having to keep a journal for ninth-grade English class. “What can happen in a day?” she grumps as she chronicles the 1984-85 school year. She doesn’t realize that a single day can be the dividing line between life and death. Forty years later, while…
I’m a children’s book author-illustrator who loves picture books that can tackle difficult topics in a unique way. Along with Where Is Poppy?, I’ve also illustrated The Remember Balloons, written by Jessie Oliveros, which helps to gently explain Alzheimer’s and memory loss to kids without sugarcoating the realities of the illness. I think books can be a great tool for helping kids understand and process ideas that can be a little heavy or overwhelming, even for adults.
As an illustrator, it's always the artwork of a picture book that first draws me in.
In this book, lots of double-page spreads allow the beautiful, painterly illustrations to shine. But the text is equally moving. I love the way the author uses animal metaphors to describe the different ways grief can take form.
An imaginative and heartfelt book that reminds us that there is no loss without love. When Grief first arrives, it is like an elephant-so big that there is hardly room for anything else. But over time, Grief can become smaller and smaller-until it is a fox, then a mouse, and finally a flickering firefly in the darkness leading us down a path of loving remembrance. This lyrical work is an empathetic and comforting balm for anyone who is experiencing grief-be it grieving the loss of a loved one or the losses in the world around us.
I’m a children’s book author who typically centers humor at the heart of my books but who dipped into heartache to tell this specific story. As a former educator with four kiddos of my own, I’ve been able to witness the myriad ways kids cope with grief, everything from hiding out in blanket forts to holding a backyard funeral service for a beloved pet roly-poly. I hope my book, Where is Poppy? offers kids comfort, peace, and preparation for their own unique journeys with loss. I studied creative writing and political science at Stanford University and hold an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
This book isn’t just powerful because of how it allows kids to think (and ask) about death, but because of the staggering beauty in the storytelling itself.
We see two stories play out in neighboring houses—in one, a child is born; in the other, a dog is put to sleep. These parallel scenes help children see the circle of life in a way that is both accessible and, at times, heartbreaking.
I’ve read this story to our kids no less than 20 times, and each time, there’s an unmistakable silence as we witness the first and last breaths take place. It’s an absolute stunner and one that I’ve turned to time and again in my own processing of loss.
An ordinary day in an ordinary neighborhood turns out to be quite extraordinary in this moving story about the circle of life.
It’s an average day in the neighborhood—children play, roses are watered, and a crow watches over it all. But then two visitors arrive at two houses, one to help a family say hello to a new baby and one to help a family say goodbye to a beloved pet. This sensitive picture book takes a gentle look at life, death, the bonds of family, and the extraordinary moments that make ordinary days so special.
We moved to New Orleans in July 2005. We had six weeks in our first home, filling it with furniture, buying a new car, and taking advantage of my first job. When Hurricane Katrina collapsed the levees holding back the nearby lakes, our home – and those of 80% of the city – filled with water. As I waited for FEMA and insurance to help us, I saw instead it was our friends, friends of friends, and faith-based organizations that helped us get back on our feet. Using our own experiences as a start, I traveled to India and Japan to study how communities around the world survived and thrived during shocks.
Sheryl Sandberg movingly tells the story of losing her husband suddenly and having to continue with her family on her own. Grief seems a solitary process that we have to work through by ourselves. But she describes how her process of recovery required connections with friends, with family, and with institutions in her neighborhood. All of us have to deal with personal tragedies like the deaths of loved ones, and I appreciated how this book combined her sharing her personal experience with broader expertise from psychology and social science.
From Facebook's COO and Wharton's top-rated professor, the #1 New York Times best-selling authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving forward after life's inevitable setbacks.
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. "I was in 'the void,'" she writes, "a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe." Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to…
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse…
My first memory is of my father telling me about the cosmos, the Big Bang, and how the sun would burn out one day, expanding so big it would swallow the Earth. This memory haunted my dreams and waking hours, instilling a fascination with the life and death cycles of everything. Now I’m an artist, writer, educator and somatic coach devoted to helping people talk about and honor the things western culture doesn’t create space for–big emotions, messy love and the gifts of dying.
This book taught me that I don’t always have to show up “right” or “well.” I can just show up, and that is often enough–to death or any other difficult situation. I walked away from this book with the assurance that there is no way to fully prepare for death because every person is different, every death is different and grief is a bit of a trickster (you never know how it's going to show up).
The mix of personal stories and practical direction has lasted with me over the years and is now a part of how I hold space as a friend, family member, coach, spiritual guide, lover, and partner in life and death.
A hospital chaplain reflects on grief and loss, mindfulness and healing, in this “beautifully written” meditation on the spiritual, emotional, and philosophical implications of end-of-life care (Jan Chozen Bays, author of Mindfulness on the Go)
As a hospital chaplain, Amy Wright Glenn has been present with those suffering from suicide, trauma, disease, and unforeseen accidents and has been witness to the intense grief and powerful insights that so often accompany loss. She weaves together memoir, philosophical inquiry, and cutting-edge research on death/dying to chronicle how we, as individuals and as a culture, handle everything from grief to mortality.
