Books like Coming on Home Soon
By Jacqueline Woodson
For the child who feels every goodbye deeply, this is a story that sits with the ache of missing someone instead of rushing past it. Quiet, tender, wintry — more hush than hurry.
After their father dies, six-year-old Marvel, her seven siblings, and their mother move into a run-down tar-paper shack deep in the Wisconsin woods and slowly turn it into a home.
A young girl emigrates from Taiwan to America with her family, leaving behind her beloved popo, and stays connected across the ocean through visits, calls, and memories as she grows up.
A young beaver named Buckley carves small wooden boats and sends them out to sea, each one carrying a note to the father he's lost.
A young boy visits his grandfather, but neither speaks the other's language, leaving them stuck in awkward silence — until they sit down together to draw, discovering a way to connect without words.
Three baby owls wake in their tree to find their mother gone, and as the night presses in around them, they cling to each other and wait for her to come back.
A young man leaves Japan to explore California, falls in love with both places, and spends his life torn between two homelands he can never fully choose between.
A boy named Eli grows up on his grandparents' farm, learning to love the barn, the fields, and the river that surround him — then shares those same places with his baby sister, Sylvie.
A young military child must say goodbye to her deployed Daddy for what feels like a billion days, and has to find ways to feel connected to him and cope with her scary swirl of feelings until he comes home.
A parent shares a string of tender wishes for a child — to find wonder in flying birds, to know love as vast and constant as the moon loves the sky.
A young military child named Lily has to say goodbye to her Navy Daddy for a deployment that feels like a billion days, and must find her way through the swirl of hard feelings until she can joyfully welcome him home.
Two children upset about being apart from their mother learn that everyone who loves each other is connected by an Invisible String made of love, one that stretches any distance and never breaks.
A gentle tour through nature at dusk, as mother animals — owl, fox, whale, and more — each tell their babies just how deep and boundless their love runs.
