Picture Books About Illness

Check out these books if you're looking for a way to help talk to your child about illnesses, both serious and more common.

Updated June 14, 2024
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The perfect shelter
Welsh, Clare Helen
Paper Book
A story about sisters. A story about love. A story about how it feels when someone close to you has cancer. When the author's uncle was diagnosed with cancer, she wrote this text for her children, to help them name and explore the complicated feelings borne of heartbreaking situations.
Cloud babies
Colfer, Eoin
Paper Book
Eoin Colfer, New York Times best-selling author of the Artemis Fowl series, pens a warm, empathy-building story based on illustrator Chris Judge's family's experience with childhood illness. Six-year-old Erin's favorite game is spotting animals in the clouds with her mom...
Abuela's super capa
Siqueira, Ana
Paper Book
A heartwarming bilingual picture book about a young boy who learns to accept that Abuela needs to retire her super capa.  Saturdays are superhero days. Equipped with their milkshakes and capas, Luis and his abuela can turn anything into an adventure. But when Abuela gets sick,...
Bear feels sick
Wilson, Karma.
Paper Book
The sixth installment of Karma Wilson's award-winning, New York Times bestselling series about a Bear and his forest friends. Autumn has come to the woods, and Bear doesn't feel well. He sniffles and sneezes. He cannot sleep. He aches all over. Worst of all, he's feeling...
Another way to climb a tree
Scanlon, Elizabeth Garton
Paper Book
When Lulu's feeling well, she climbs every tree in sight, especially the tallest ones, the ones with the widest branches, the ones with the stickiest sap. But when Lulu's sick, she's not allowed outside. She wonders if the trees are lonely without her. Maybe the...
Bob, not Bob!
Scanlon, Elizabeth Garton
Paper Book
Little Louie is stuck in bed with a bad cold. His nose is clogged, his ears are crackling, and his brain feels full. All he wants is his mom to take care of him, but whenever he calls out for her, his stuffed-up nose summons slobbery dog Bob instead! As Louie tries and tries to make himself...

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