By Micha Green
AFRO D.C. and Digital Editor
Two years into the coronavirus pandemic and with more than 900,000 American lives lost, ABC News Correspondent and bestselling author Linsey Davis has a new children’s book that is sure to resonate with readers who have lost a loved one. Using her own conversations with her son about loss, and considering the hundreds of thousands of young people who have experienced loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, How High is Heaven is a narrative that helps children understand the complicated and nuanced subject of death.
“How High is Heaven? basically is based off of my son coming to me one day after school and saying how come his friend has two grandmas and two grandpas and he just had one of each. So we were talking about Grandma P, his grandmother who passed away when he was just one and he didn’t remember her and so he wanted to see her. And at first I thought he meant he wanted to see pictures so I’m getting out pictures of her with him when he was a baby. And he said, ‘No! I want to go see her in Heaven,’” Davis recounted in an AFRO Live interview.
“He ended up with this kind of preoccupation, I’d even call it, for several days and then weeks about how he wanted to go to Heaven. So we started having the conversation. It was the first time we had talked about the idea of death and loss and then fast forward a few months and we were on a plane and he was looking out the window and he said, ‘I don’t see her.’ And I said, ‘You don’t see who?’ And he said, ‘I don’t see Grandma P. We’re up here in Heaven and I don’t see her.’ And that’s when I said, let me write this book,” the ABC News Correspondent, wife, mother and proud Christian added.
With How High is Heaven?, Davis’s fourth children’s book, the mother and author said she had to consider the convoluted conversation of death and how hard of a subject it is for adults to even grasp, much less children. Davis was tasked with finding a way to relay the ideals of death in the book, considering both a child’s perspective and the Christian notion of God’s promise of everlasting life in Heaven.
“So really what I did, because I think you have to meet children where they are, and so death can be heavy and a really complicated conversation for adults even because there’s really so much we don’t truly know, but for those who believe in God’s promise of Heaven being our reward, there is this idea that we are going to be reunited. And the message that I hope that I am able to successfully deliver for kids and for parents, alike, is that from what I observed from my son, the one thing that kind of gave him solace is this idea that he would be reunited with her, that he would see her again,” Davis explained .
“The book is really about my son going in search, trying to physically get to this place of Heaven. And the little boy and his sister, the main characters in the book, try and build a lego staircase to heaven, take a pogo stick, a trampoline, a spaceship, a hot air balloon, and all of these physical ways that they try to get to Heaven, and ultimately, by the end of this story the little boy learns that’s not really what it’s all about as far as getting to this place called Heaven and that for now he’s going to enjoy Heaven here on Earth. But he knows he will see Grandma P,” the author added.
While death is an unfortunate constant— thus meaning an evergreen relevancy for the need of this book— Davis said she considered the hundreds of thousands of children who have experienced loss due to COVID-19 when writing How High is Heaven?.
“I definitely think, especially during this time of loss for COVID, I mean people are losing lives all the time of course, but there’s just been this intense loss, and in particular for children. We just passed the grim milestone of more than 900,000 American lives lost to COVID-19. And there was a journal by pediatrics a few months ago that talked about that one-in-four of those deaths, they were the primary caregiver of a young child. So you have all these children, who have really been orphaned in a way by COVID, and so we’re talking about more than 200,000 over the course of the past two years who are now growing up without that grandmother, grandfather, mother, father. And I think that, especially when you have that intense relationship then all of a sudden that person isn’t there anymore, you need to try and kind of have that discussion,” Davis advised.
The mother and storyteller said that her goal is for How High is Heaven? to be both educational and uplifting for both adults and children.
“I hope that is an inspiring and hopeful message for young kids and a way for parents to kind of open up the conversation in their own household.”
How High is Heaven? releases Feb. 15 and can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other bookstores.
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