Children’s books that make you cry

[BikeRunSki]

When DD (now 6) was younger I could never finish The Paper Dolls without shedding a tear.

Tonight, we’be just finished the Sophie series (Dick King-Smith). The last 2 or 3 chapters had me crying my eyes out. DD was “but Mummy, it’s only a book’”.

Is it War Horse Pink?

The giving tree

Mars Needs Moms by Berkley Breathed is so, so lovely. Never fails to bring a tear to my eye

For children aged about 8 upwards, The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert Dejong. It's about a young Chinese boy who loses his family in wartime. I read it first when I was about 10 and have read it aloud to both my children and cried so much I could hardly continue. If ever I want a good cry I just have to pick this book up and read the final chapter.

Absolutely the velveteen rabbit.
Don't ever read it with a child, you'll never get through it in one piece!

Black Beauty, Charlotte's Web and some of the Jacqueline Wilson books that I read to my girls!

No matter what - cant stop myself

Little Women

Little Princess

Dark Materials

Just because I knew it off by heart as read it every night to the dc - the tiger that cane to tea

We have a few of the Mog books but hadn't heard of 'goodbye mog' as mentioned a few times on this thread. Just read the description to DH whilst sobbing and gulping. That is one book I won't be getting, ever!

And Charlotte Web

Pretty much everything Michael Morpurgo has written makes me sob. And The Mousehole Cat.

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book
The Heart and the Bottle
Goodbye Mog

All three of these are very sad.

The end of Winnie the Pooh where Christopher Robin is about to go away to school and he asks Pooh never to forget him.

The Velveteen Rabbit. Oh god. I tried to read it to DD a couple of years ago and ended up a blubbering wreck. She still occasionally says "don't ever read that rabbit book again". She was very upset by me being so upset. I feel so bad about it!

The Birthday Surprise by Shirley Hughes, where Bob McNally's cat, Smoky, dies of old age 😭 and of course along similar lines, Goodbye Mog.

The one that utterly traumatised me as a child was The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The little girl's father died in India leaving her a penniless orphan in a horrible boarding school in England. It did have a happy ending but not the one I wanted which would have been the girl's father turning up to save her not dead after all! I can remember being distraught by it. My dad worked abroad for months on end when I was a child and I think this book played on my fears of him never coming home.

The Snail and the Whale for some reason always gets me.

And No Matter What.

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch i can't even look at the cover!!
went to the book store to pick up a few Robert Munch books for the grandchildren....sobbed in the store...dh didn't understand why...kept insisting i explain the book...

Peepo - always makes me cry - reminds me of all of my grandparents and greatgrandparents and all the people who died in the war.

Its the line "and the baby in the mirror, just like him" that I can't say without choking up. Everything about WW2 upsets me though tbh.

There’s Going To Be A Baby has me in floods when I was 7 months pg. I was in the library with 2 yo DS. He was rather alarmed!

Oh The Places You’ll Go for me too.

‘Kid, you’ll move mountains’ 😭

I love you little monster. Had me in tears the first time as me and ds we’re going through a rough patch and it just summed up beautifully what I wanted to say. He was bemused to say the least

The Velveteen Rabbit - only have just finally read this a few weeks ago and I was a mess!

Nothing - V similar to the above about a bear who gets left behind in a house move and is referred to as "oh that's nothing"

Monkey Puzzle (on a bad day!)

A cat named Perkins (think that's what it's called)

Totti
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
When the World was Waiting for You

All for different reasons - all tear-jerkers. Wonderful books.

Glad it's not just me that gets emotional reading "oh, the places you'll go". It's so beautifully written, I made the mistake of reading it to dd for the first time the night before she started primary school. I was in floods of tears afterwards

The Selfish Giant
Goodnight Mister Tom
Paper Dolls

the velveteen rabbit
the last mog one
goodnight mr tom
the last page of the polar express
but
we have just finished the house at pooh corner and this finished me off completely...
"'Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.'
Pooh thought for a little.
'How old shall I be then?'
'Ninety-nine.'
Pooh nodded.
'I promise,' he said."

then of course this had me in floods.

"So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."