Jellybean: A Baby's Journey to God

Katie Fitzgerald reviews a new picture book designed to comfort and encourage families who have lost an unborn infant.

Jellybean: A Baby’s Journey to God, written by Theoni and Bastian Bell and illustrated by Bernadette Gockowski, is a beautifully comforting picture book about the journey of an infant from conception to the moment she is called to heaven instead of delivered into the world. Written in rhyming verse, this book begins by describing the cozy environment of the mother’s womb, and all the pleasant sounds a baby girl, Jellybean, can hear, including her parents’ voices and her siblings’ play. As the time approaches when the baby is meant to join her family, the Blessed Mother comes to take her to heaven and explains that the rest of her family can’t join her now, but that she can pray for them until they can be reunited.

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The loss of an unborn child can be so hard to explain to young children, but this book eases the burden by putting this difficult experience into kid-friendly terms. The story is a tear-jerker, as any book about infant loss is bound to be, but the sadness is accompanied by hope in Jesus. The living siblings mourn their lost sister, but the baby is with them in their sadness, and the children and parents are able to ask for her intercession. The book is also beautifully pro-life, as it depicts the child as a human being from its earliest moments.

The gorgeous illustrations really capture the emotions of each stage of the story: the joyful anticipation of the new baby, the love the Blessed Mother has for Jellybean when she comes for her, the joy on the face of Jesus as He reaches down to embrace the baby when she arrives in heaven, and the sadness of the family as they visit the cemetery.

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In sharing their personal experience through this medium, these authors have given the world of Catholic children’s books a beautiful gift: an authentically Catholic book about the loss of unborn babies. If you are facing the sad task of sharing with a young child that an unborn child has died, this book is the perfect resource for that situation. It provides the words to begin the conversation as well as accompanying images to spark further discussion and questions. While the story made me cry, it also filled me with hope for all the babies I’ve known who didn’t survive until birth.

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Ask for Jellybean at your local Catholic bookseller, or order online from Amazon.com or the publisher, Holy Heroes.

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