'The Other Side of the Garden' is a Tender Exploration of a Child's Grief

By Amaris Castillo

In The Other Side of the Garden, a young girl visits a green grass field with a winding pathway, trees, and the occasional butterfly. She calls it Abuela’s garden. 

Beyond the field, behind the fence, the girl peers at an old blue house. This, she believes, is where her grandmother lives. The young narrator remembers how the garden was her favorite place to play. She remembers how her grandmother’s hugs were soft and big. 

The Other Side of the Garden (out now from Denene Millner Books) is Sili Recio’s new tender picture book about a girl who, with each visit to the garden, comes to a sad realization. Her abuela is not coming back. At its root, this story is about grief and navigating loss. It was largely inspired by Recio’s daughter – co-author Elena Djome Lawrence – and her own grief journey after the death of her abuela.

Years ago, Recio recalls Elena telling her a story. Whenever they would go to the cemetery where Recio’s mother was laid to rest, Elena would think of it as Abuela’s garden. There was a shed that the young Elena always noticed. Over the cemetery fence, she could only see its roof. “To her little brain, she thought that that was Abuela’s house,” Recio recalled. “And she always wondered why she wouldn’t see her Abuela, why her Abuela wasn’t coming out.”

From this story sprung the idea for a picture book. Recio said it was important to give her daughter, now a teenager, credit because it is based on Elena’s lived experience. Recio, herself a death doula, hopes their book will open up a conversation about death for families, and provide some level of comfort to whoever picks it up.

“I want to make sure that we are making space for children to grieve and that they understand what’s happened,” Recio added. “And it’s not just, someone went to sleep, or someone went away. Because when we were kids, that’s how we thought about it. Nobody ever told us what was happening.”

Like with her debut picture book, If Dominican Were a Color, Recio teamed up again with artist and children’s book illustrator Brianna McCarthy. A blend of gouache, acrylic, ink, watercolor, white charcoal and digital mediums, McCarthy’s illustrations brim with vibrancy and life. The artist from Trinidad and Tobago said she had just finished another project for Denene Millner Books when she received an email from the imprint about a new project from Recio. When asked if she was interested, McCarthy’s response was an immediate yes.

When the artist received the manuscript, she felt different emotions. At the time, McCarthy’s own mother was ailing and has since passed.

“Grieving, it takes all sorts of forms. Being able to read what grief is like from the point of view of a child, I thought, was really powerful. So the book holds a very special place in my heart because of that,” McCarthy said. “And I just thought it was a really beautiful project. When I sat with it, I just felt like I could see the characters, I could see the people. It’s always important to me when I’m able to translate words into a visual language. That’s really important to me.”

For Recio, this picture book is a love story for the brokenhearted. The author said she was grateful to work once more with McCarthy, who she knew would take good care of the book.

Though the grandmother in The Other Side of the Garden is no longer physically present, McCarthy features her in flashbacks narrated by the young granddaughter. In fact, the Abuela is a prominent presence. McCarthy said that, at first, she struggled with how to depict the grandmother in the art.

“But I wanted her to feel warm. I wanted the character to have so much gravity that you missed her. That you wish she were there. I wanted her to feel like you would recognize her absence. To me, that was very significant.”

There is a moment in the book worth noting. It’s when the young girl at the center of the story voices the realization that she won’t see her abuela, and understands why.

Recio and her daughter write:

“I wish Abuela were right here to see my new hairstyle 

or watch me get a new belt in karate

or hear my funny jokes.”

Recio recalls that part was difficult to write. Though Elena was only 15 months old when Recio’s mother died, the author recalls one day years later. Elena was about eight or nine years old, and in tears about all the things her abuela would be missing about her life. Her hairstyles, her next karate belt. Her daughter had a list.

“It was just heartbreaking for me to see,” Recio said, “because it was also my grief reflected back to me.”

Much like the girl in The Other Side of the Garden, Elena had been carrying the grief after her grandmother’s passing.

But even in death, this book shows readers, there is comfort. The young protagonist knows that, in Abuela’s garden, her late grandmother is always with her.

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Visit our BookShop to order a copy of The Other Side of the Garden.

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About the Authors: Sili Recio has been calling herself a writer since she won a trophy in a poetry contest in the sixth grade. She is an Afro-Dominican storyteller, disruptor, and Mami. Sili earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Rollins College. She entered the world of social media via her blog in 2010 and has never looked back. Sili lives in Florida with her daughter, the Frog Princess, and tries not to pass on her love of café con leche to her child. She is failing. You can visit her at SiliRecio.com.

Elena Djome Lawrence is an artist and violinist who excels in both her schoolwork and creative projects. Her literary debut picture book The Other Side of the Garden was inspired by a story she shared with her mother when she was nine years old. Her imaginative telling of her own grief serves as the foundation of the book, offering inspiration to those navigating their own journeys of loss.

About the Illustrator: Brianna McCarthy is a mixed media visual communicator working and living in Trinidad and Tobago. She is a self-taught artist and aims to create a new discourse examining issues of beauty, stereotypes, and representation as well as documenting the process—particularly poignant in an ever smaller, digitally-connected world. Her form takes shape through masking and performance art, fabric collage, traditional media, and installation pieces.

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Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist and writer. Her debut book, Bodega Stories, will be published in September 2026 from the University Press of Florida. You can follow her work at amariscastillo.com.