Water Bugs and Dragonflies: Explaining Death to Young Children

With I first bought this book, - I thought to myself "The Jehovah's 'Watchtower' is bigger than this!" Doubtful this teeny tiny thing would be of benefit at all.... So many of the books I have bought on this delicate and heartwrenching subject are far too scientific, cold, and frank in their language -- too few support a Religious child's upbringing; to BELIEVE that death is not the END, their love LIVES ON, and WILL be with them again.... And finding so many lacking a message of faith only discouraged me further to hold onto my own. And all these others were bigger, fancier, far more artwork, many more pages - - But "Great things come in small packages"...BELIEVE IT! I read it aloud just after I purchased it to a friend as we stood waiting for coffee - and found very quickly I had an audience - the patrons in line and the employees behind the counter were listening to me read, to my embarrassment - BUT..it seemed to reach down into each of us, and touch us all in some way or another. The kind employee confided in me when he handed me my coffee that he had lost his girlfriend to Leukemia 5 years ago,-how she suffered, - how HE STILL suffered... And he THANKED me for reading that outloud - ...and then, recognized me as the girl ALWAYS in the store, ALWAYS with tears streaming down my face, for hours, until closing - drinking coffee and kneeling on my knees in the aisles, SEARCHING every bible, every Religious text, books by every psychic and every therapist --Searching for SOMETHING, and he looked in my eyes and said he always knew what it was..... I bought this book because my first and only love, left me a widow at 26, just two weeks before Thanksgiving, dying beside me in the car on the way to his mother's house- I thought he was sleeping, - but he had suffered an annuerisym, at age 30. My great heartbreak is I have no children to share this with of ours; we were trying to be "smart" and wanted to have everything ' ready ':( - But his nieces and nephews were so very attatched so very close to him, - I am desperate to comfort them -- even though I have yet to find it myself...... To my surprise, - these few pages seemed to have brought some tiny spark of life back into me. I was never expecting what I intended to ease these children's hurt, instill hope and strengthen their waning faith in this tragedy - would have done this for ME. There are even prayers and passages from the bible in the back, and an epilogue as touching as the story itself. This will prove to be a great and cherished blessing, for whomever you give it to. God bless The Stickneys for sharing this beautiful tale. And God bless you and comfort you if you are searching, too.

This little tiny book is a wonderful tale for small children about the difficulty of knowing what lies beyond the grave. In the most delicate and gentle way, the authors use the metaphor of the dragonfly larva, who live below the surface of the water, and the adult dragonflies, to illustrate the notion of someone going beyond our sight, to a marvelous place. They can't return to tell us about it. we just have to wait our turn. The authors' notes help to provide a spiritual context for talking to a young child about the death of someone close. I am an Episcopalian, and found the language and theology very congruent with our tradition.

my husband and i were told this story while we were in the hospital after our daughter was stillborn. i loved how this story talked about life after death but didnt talk about heaven, jusst a "better place." it also talked about why people that die cant come back. this is a pocket book, small and paperback. i am getting a tattoo of a dragonfly above my heart in memory of my daughter because of this story. i'm glad i found it in book form. i bought 3. one for each set of grandparents and one for us to keep.

We read this book before and after telling our 3 year old daughter that someone in our family had died. Then we added our own religious interpretation that our loved one is now in Heaven with God, and we can't see her, but we can remember her, just like waterbugs and dragonflies. I'd recommend having this on hand to help the first time someone your child knows passes on. It is a beautiful and simple metaphor which would be appropriate for agnostics as well as most religious beliefs.

A young woman read this short children's book at our hospice memorial service. This event brought together people of all ages and from a variety of religious traditions. Such a gathering requires a selection of materials that will speak to many, while offending no one. The author's gentle story speaks to the profoundness of the death experience in a way that leaves the reader or listener joyful. This joy is a great gift for those who have experienced loss. I highly recommend that each household, even each elementary school, keep a copy on hand. It can serve as a deeply appropriate focus for any kind of memorial gathering, or for classroom reading to children when a loss has occurred.