If you’re a parent, you may have had to take on the difficult task of explaining loss to your young child. This was definitely a concern for Manoj Abraham who knew he had to explain the death of the family’s pet dog to his young son.
He decided that there could be a way to help this process for his children as well as every other child. This is when he turned to literature. Abraham created a book called Where the Tomorrows Go— a heartfelt story about a young girl navigating through the grief of losing her beloved dog.
“I try to use the loss of a pet as the vehicle through which to talk about loss to a small child,” Abraham told NBC News. “I wanted something universal, nothing too specific to a certain nationality or religion; the message should apply to all living things, whether it’s a person or a pet.”
Abraham not only believes that the book helps children learn positive ways to cope with grief, it also gives children the opportunity to process and understand something as serious as death.
It’s not only the readers who find this book helpful. The National Association of School Psychologists plans to add Where the Tomorrows Go to their updated list of Recommended Books for Children Coping With Loss or Trauma.
“Being from a first generation Indian-American family, respect was everything, it was woven into the fabric of who I am,” Abraham told NBC News. “My parents told us that they worked hard: you have to understand the value of money and hard work. That helped me write the first book. How do I teach [my son] that it’s not about possessions, money, and fame it’s really about quality of character. When I wrote my second book, just like in the first book, I wanted to emphasize the interaction between children and parents.”
