A memorial book for one fish, taken seriously.

A hardcover storybook for the fish who lived at the centre of a small kingdom. A hardcover. Matte-printed. One copy.

A fish memorial book is the household's first practice.

A fish dies the way a fish dies — quietly, overnight, with no warning the household can act on. A child finds him in the morning. The conversation that follows is the household's first conversation about death, conducted at the kitchen table over cereal. The funeral is a small ceremony at the toilet, or at the rose bush at the back. The grief is real, even if the adults are surprised by it.

What the household needs is a way to take the loss seriously without overstating it. A hardcover book about the fish — his name, his castle, the fact that he refused certain food, the orange spot on his side — does that. It puts the loss on the bookshelf next to the other family books. It makes the child feel that an adult is treating it the way an adult treats grief.

What the press will set down for one fish.

You tell us his name. You tell us three details: the colour, the corner of the tank he preferred, the food he would refuse. Juno writes the story. The tank, the castle, and the small careful world he lived in are illustrated. The book is hardcover, matte-printed, in a plain box. The child reads it on the floor of the room where the tank used to sit.

It is not a joke book. It is not a cartoon. It is a real bound storybook, painted in the same register as our memorial books for dogs and cats and grandparents. We do not make the loss smaller because the body was small. The household decided it was real. We agree.

Eighty-five dollars. One edition. One small kingdom.

The book arrives in roughly two weeks in a plain box. The child opens it once and closes it. Years later they will tell someone, at dinner in their thirties, that their family ordered a hardcover book about a fish, and the person at the table will understand the household they grew up in.

More from the press.

• The rainbow bridge, quietly — The memorial hub.
• Pets hub — All pet storybooks.
• Pet loss gift — For someone whose pet has died.

a storybook no one else has ever read.