I remember, as a child, sobbing over books. Sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe, trying to gasp for air that never quite made it past that hole in my heart or that nauseating loss in my stomach.
You know that type of crying: it’s the ugly kind. Nothing delicate or sweet about it, just pure hurt and loss accompanied by a splotchy face, throbbing headache, and stuffed-up nose.
My parents didn’t know how to comfort me.
“It’s not real,” they would say. “It didn’t really happen.”
That, as any reader knows, isn’t quite the case.
It was real.
It did happen.
You experienced it alongside the narrator, and you took it into your heart as your own.
This is the magic of reading.
I think the arguments for reading are well established. If you’re reading this, chances are you love books…but how do you feel about books that break your heart?
I don’t know about you, but I love and hate them all in the same breath. I worry over having my heart broken by a book (especially if the story involves animals), but even as I protest I find my hands wrapped around another heartache I want to absorb.
Books like Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls and Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner were among the first to teach my heart just how it could break.
Since then, I have had my heart broken in more ways than I can count, but the only hurt I pursue time and time again is the heartbreak I find in books.
When it comes to reading and hearts, I realize I have a strange mantra: Break hearts well. Break them young.
With that in mind, here are a few of our staff’s favorite heartaches.
Picture Books
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Good News, Bad News by Jeff Mack
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs by Tomie DePaola
Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed
Rickie and Henri by Jane Goodall
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams/ Komako Sakai
Essential Classics
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Old Yeller by Fred Gibson
Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardnier
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings
Middle Grade Readers
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
Young Adult Novels
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Heartbreak for Adults
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A Severed Head by Iris Murdock
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
What did I get from having books break my heart when I was little? What do I get when a book breaks my heart now?
Books can be our safest, most secret confidants. They provide a safe place for children and adults alike to feel vulnerable. The stories they share teach us compassion, empathy, and kindness; they invoke an awareness of the Other outside ourselves, both human and not. Within the pages of a story we are granted permission to cry, to mourn, to hurt. Books are, perhaps, our safest cathartic outlets.
Books understand the art of breaking hearts.
But what do you think? Is it important for us to read books that break our hearts? What books taught your heart how to break?
~ Justus
Who wrote this? It’s fantastic. I’d add The Viirgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman…
Oops. Looks like I forgot to sign it! Justus wrote this one. I remember reading Virgin Suicides and Maus in school–both those are heartrending reads! ~ Justus
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