This is the first book I have seen on specifically explaining suicide of a parent to a young child, and it is a particularly lovely one in picture and in text. There is an afterward by Dr Riet Fiddelaers-Jaspers, a bereavement specialist, who explains just why it is necessary to be honest with children about suicide and who gives specific ways of presenting the information in a gentle way. This book is also a gentle approach and deals with a young girl who is terribly sad because she can't understand why her mother would have wanted to leave her. We meet Luna in a park where she and her dad and baby brother have gone for a picnic. It is exactly a year since her mother died, and Luna is feeling anything but happy even though it is a beautiful day. She is wearing a red hat that was her mother's and when dad says she looks like her mum in it, she gets very angry and frustrated and throws the hat down, saying, 'I am not like mum! Because I wouldn't just stop living when I wanted to.' Dad begins to explain that her mum didn't want to die, but she was so sad and unhappy that she couldn't see any other way out. Doctors hadn't been able to help with the illness 'hiding inside her head'. Luna asks if it was her fault because sometimes she was naughty. No, dad explains. Mum loved her very much and Luna was her 'Lovely Luna'. It wasn't anyone's fault that mum died. The three of them take flowers to mum's grave and have a little cry, but then begin to remember happy memories of their time with mum, and Luna thinks perhaps she will keep the hat after all. The illustrations, all on a soft beige and white background, are delicately full of emotion and sometimes gentle humour too as dad deftly handles Luna's questions. A winning picture book about a very difficult subject. Available from Amazon, from good bookshops, and from the publisher at www.jkp.com.