The Shared Room

A family loses a child, and her bedroom stays exactly as it was. This picture book sits with that room and with the parents and sibling who cannot yet enter it, following them slowly toward the day the space can hold the living again. Yang does not resolve the grief so much as let time pass inside it. It is the least characteristically Hmong-specific of her picture books and one of the most useful: bereaved families and the librarians who serve them have very few books this direct about a sibling's death, and fewer still that neither preach nor console falsely. Its place in this catalog is as evidence of Yang's range beyond the refugee narrative she is best known for. For ages 5 to 10, for grief counselors and school libraries, and for families who need the book to say it first.