The girl takes delight in finding new things. Plan an activity / trip in which you would be able to find out new things about a topic of your choice. What will you need? Where might you go? Who would come with you? This book helps in that regard. The story is simple: a little girl grows up with her grandfather who frequently reads to her, goes with her to play in the snow etc. Until one day he is no longer there and she needs to find a way to deal with the loss. It's also about having had her grandfather in her life shapes her as an adult later. Make a list of words / phrases that describe how the girl feels at the start of the story, when she finds the empty chair, and at the end of the story.

She puts her heart in a glass bottle so it can't be hurt, and grows up into a young woman who has no curiosity about the world at all. But her heart is safe. Then one day she encounters a little girl, a girl just like she had been, full of questions about the world. We witness the duo’s blissful explorations until, one day, we realize that the father is gone — the little girl finds herself facing the empty chair. Our zest for being parents and thinking of what is best for our child makes us weave a cocoon around our children, a cocoon so strong and dense that even the strongest of all pain, rejection and deception will be left ineffectual. But loss is a part of life, very much like eating food or drinking water or just breathing air because death is inevitable and loss is just its shadow. So she sets out to liberate her heart from its glassy prison — but the bottle has been fortified by years of self-protection.As parents we should teach our children that death and loss is that ubiquitous albatross which is as real as life and happiness; sooner or later it will come. The only thing we can do is live in the present and not whine about the past or anticipate much of the future. Life and death are part of life; much like day and night. Without one the other is not possible; it’s like The Cause And Effect Theory of Philosophy which focusses on light-oriented thinking.

The Heart and the Bottle is one such story told through the eyes of a child; it tells us that as parents the greatest lesson we can teach our children is conceptualising loss and pain: from as trivial as losing a toy in school to losing someone dear to your life, because the inevitable cannot be fortified. Jeffers has also explored the subject of grief with equal subtlety and genius in a grownup project celebrating the art of bearing witness. This book by prolific children’s author Oliver Jeffers provides the context for children to understand the difficult topics of loss and grief. The narrative will help open discussion around how to deal with the emotions of losing something or someone we love. There are strong links to PSHE and a focus on holding on to hope to overcome hard times. Links and themes: Jeffers anatomises loss and the processes of grief with an honesty and ingenuity that will move adults and children of any age.” Telegraph The story is about a young girl who is curious about her world, engaged, creative, dreamy, joyful, and who has a loving bond with an older person (someone who appears to be akin to a grandparent based on the book’s illustrations). The story is also about the girl’s experience of loss when the older person is no longer there, of the emotional pain she feels, and of how she copes with that pain, of what follows.Award-winning picture book star Oliver Jeffers explores themes of love and loss in this life-affirming and uplifting tale. Jeffers tells the story of a little girl, “much like any other,” whose expansive and exuberant curiosity her father fuels by reading to her all sorts of fascinating books about the sea and the stars and the wonders of our world. An inquisitive little girl, who is enchanted by the world around her, is badly shaken when she loses someone she loves. Some of the illustrations have speech bubbles that show pictures instead of words. Can you think of the words that the characters might be using?

The girl’s head is filled with ‘all the curiosities of the world’. What does it mean to be curious? What things are you curious about? How could you find out more about them? the little girl who is now a grown woman finds her light; light which finally opens the Pandora Box, the bottle, and sets the girl free from the dungeon of captivity and re-find ‘Happiness’ once more. Once there was a girl who was full of wonderment at how the world worked. She shared all her dreams and excitement with her father, who always had the answer to every question. That is until one day when his chair was empty, not to be filled again - how would the girl ever find meaning from her life again? Use the first line of the book (‘Once there was a girl, much like any other’) to start your own story. How will it be similar / different to this one? The message of the book, despite some probably describing it as "dark", is actually uplifting - like I said, because it gives you a way to cope with the unthinkable.

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Look at the sketches on the inside covers of the book. Can you think of some captions / speech bubbles / thought bubbles for each of them? This stylish and moving picture book from Best New Illustrator, Oliver Jeffers, explores love and loss and offers an ultimately uplifting resolution. But if grief is so disorienting and crushing an emotion for adults, how are unprepared little hearts expected to handle its weight? The little girl cannot, and so she doesn’t.