Suggested Reading for Children About the Elderly and/or Dying.

Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children. Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen. This book tells about beginnings and endings, and the living in between. It tells about plants, animals and people.

It Must Hurt A Lot: A Child's Book About Death. Doris Sanford. A book about death, learning, and growing.

Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs. Tomie dePaola. Tommy loved his family's Sunday visits to his grandmother, Nana Downstairs and his great-grandmother, Nana Upstairs. When Nana Upstairs dies, it is the closeness of his loving family which comforts him and helps him to accept her death.

Tom. Tomie dePaola. DePaolo champions a special relationship he had with his grandfather.

The Two of Them. Aliki. About a girl, her grandfather, and their special love and caring.

Song and Dance Man. Karen Ackerman. A story about a grandfather and his three grandchildren, as he shares his past livelihood with them.

Mrs. Katz and Tush. Patricia Polacco. About the relationship between Mrs. Katz, a Jewish Polish immigrant, and Larnel a young African-American boy. Wonderful.

Verdi. Janell Cannon. About a snake that doesn't want to grow old!

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge. Mem Fox. About a little boy who lives next door to an old age home and becomes friends with some of the residents. Touching.