I spuddle.

These books will make you cry. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing. Sort of like a bruise that hurts when you push on it, you might find yourself reaching for one on a day when you think, “Nothing will spice up story time tonight more than if Mummy starts crying so hard she has to excuse herself before she frightens the child/children/her spouse/the family goldfish.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

1.

Are you kidding me with this book? I have not once got past the part where the baby becomes a teenager. That tears me apart. Someone once read it all the way to the end to The Bun — without crying! We’ll just call that person “random psycho”. — and The Bun still asks pretty much every night when I’m going to be a baby again so he can carry me around. Cannot even describe this book without heaving great gut wrenching belly sobs.

2.

Maybe this one will leave you completely unmoved, but if so, that simply means you have never owned a dog. If you have owned a dog, currently own a dog, think in the future you may own a dog, be warned. If your dog has just died, AVOID. This one will leap into your tear ducts and do the hokey pokey and your kid will ask you why your eyes are leaking so vigorously all over the page because he does not understand what is sad about Heaven. The Bun is now excited to GO to Heaven, where he’ll be able to throw a ball for Tika, who is surely getting lonely up there with no one to play with.

3.

Oh sure, you’ll think it’s just a book about a guy teaching his kid how to ride a bike. The Sad in this one sneaks up on you, but it will get you. It’s about how those kids are going to Grow Up and Ride Away from you. A thin metaphor but I can’t even type this without crying.

4.

This one has a lot of different covers, some of them appearing more toddler friendly than others. It may be toddler friendly but it is not grown up friendly. You would have to be a stone cold robot to be unmoved by this classic tale of How Hard Can You Cry While You Read A Children’s Book Anyway and Why On Earth Would You Pick It Up Again Even Though It Was A Board Book And You Thought Maybe They Edited Out The Sad In A Book Clearly Designed For Those So Young They Still Are At Risk Of Eating The Pages.

5.

Yes, yes, they are going to grow up and leave us and get old themselves and then DIE. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. The passage of time is beautiful and thank goodness there are picture books to remind us of that. I’m only being a bit sarcastic.

******

There you have it. All five of these made me cry and they will make you cry, too. Don’t get them all at once. That would be too much. The only other time I’ve cried so hard in a surprising way (i.e. I didn’t have any idea I was about to be crying, it was an unanticipated attack of the Sad) was when I went to see the movie Dodgeball and one of the previews was for that wretched Nicholas Sparks’ debacle called “The Notebook”. I never did see the movie, but that bit in the preview where he says, “I read to her so she remembers.” That totally got me. It got me again! Just now when I typed that, I welled up a bit! Maybe I need some mood balancing medication. I should look into that.

I’ll throw an honorary mention to that scene in Finding Nemo where Ellen’s character Dory is swimming around the chain and Nemo’s dad has just swum (swimmed? swam? I’m having some kind of grammar-block tonight) away, leaving her all alone, and she’s just there SWIMMING AROUND THE CHAIN. Because home is where HE is. Brutal.

I weep. I actually like weeping or would if I ever did it properly, in the true sense of the word. Weeping is such a pretty word and a pretty thing to do and does nothing to describe what I actually did in all these situations, which involved a madly trembling chin, streaming snot and tears, and some kind of bizarre hiccoughing sound.

Filed under: Books, Kids