The Perfect Shelter by Clare Helen Walsh

Weekly Trip to the Library

If you and your Nanny Kids are like most during the coronavirus pandemic you inevitably know someone who has been terribly sick due to Covid-19.

The Perfect Shelter, by Clare Helen Welsh and illustrated by Asa Gilland, is a moving picture book which is profoundly relevant at this time. This children’s book explores the complicated emotions we have when someone we love is sick.

The Perfect Shelter opens with two sisters enjoying nature and enjoying a shared love of building a fort. Slowly we learn that the elder of the two sisters is ill. The weather changes as the sister’s illness and the main character’s emotions change. As her sister is admitted to hospital, the readers are then taken on an emotional journey that follows the younger sibling change from feelings of pure happiness to fear, anger, and sadness. She longs for her sister to get better and feels despondent. She wishes she could get back to her perfect shelter with her sister.

The story captures the turmoil, uncertainty, sadness, and anxiety of watching a loved one go through illness and wanting things to go back to normal, and it ends with a celebration of finding a new normal.

Pandemic or not — eventually we all struggle with the illness of a loved one and this book can help children navigate the complicated emotions of someone they love being ill.

You can purchase your own copy of The Perfect Shelter by clicking any of the links in this book review.