Lately, my reading has been focused on research for my work in progress, Different Dream Parenting: Raising a Child with Special Needs. As part of that research, I’ve been searching for resources that help prepare terminally ill children for death, and so far, nothing has surfaced.
The only book that comes close is Heaven for Kids by Randy Alcorn. It’s written for kids in general, since all kids ask questions about death and heaven, as every parent knows. In it, Alcorn does a good job of taking the information from Heaven, his book for adults, and adapting it to kids’ perspectives, seeing what they see and thinking like they do.
Since all the answers in both Heaven and Heaven for Kids are biblically based, this was a difficult feat. To accomplish it, Alcorn leaned heavily on The Chronicles of Narnia, the classic children’s series by C. S. Lewis and the movies based on them.
Alcorn groups the questions into the following chapters:I
- ntroduction: Why Whould We Look Forward to Heaven?
- Chapter One: What Can We Know about Heaven?
- Chapter Two: After We Die, Then What?
- Chapter Three: How Will We Relate to God in Heaven?
- Chapter Four: What Is the New Earth? What Will It Be Like?
- Chapter Five: Who Rules?
- Chapter Seven: Who Will We Hang Out with in Heaven?
- Chapter Eight: Will Animals Live in the New Earth?
- Chapter Nine: What Will We Do in Heaven?
- Chapter Ten: How Can We Know We’re Going to Heaven?
- Conclusion: The Story That Goes on Forever
Within those groupings, the author answers questions like these:
- Can people in heaven see what’s happening on earth?
- Will we really see God?
- Will we wear clothes?
- Will we sleep?
- Will people get married?
- Will we see our pets again?
- Will we travel through time?
This book is a great resource for parents of healthy kids and a blessing to those facing the death of any family member. To get the most from the book, I recommend first reading the Chronicles of Narnia series with kids and then reading Heaven for Kids together. Otherwise, the frequent references to Narnia will make little sense.
That said, I could sure use more kid-friendly resources for families grappling with the death of someone they love, especially children. So if anyone knows of any, please leave a comment. Thanks!
