Book: The Tenth Good Thing About Barney

Overview
Judith Viorst’s 1971 picture book The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, illustrated with quiet precision by Erik Blegvad, follows a young boy grappling with the death of his beloved cat. In a few carefully chosen scenes and spare, candid language, it offers a gentle, unsentimental way to talk with children about grief, memory, and what happens after a life ends. The story’s structure, naming ten good things about the pet, becomes a small ritual that steadies the child and gives shape to his sorrow.

Story
Barney the cat has died, and the family decides to hold a simple funeral in the backyard. To help her son prepare, the boy’s mother suggests he think of ten good things to say about Barney. He quickly remembers how warm and soft the cat was, how he was brave and comforting, how he kept the boy company. Counting these memories provides real solace, but he stalls at nine. The missing tenth weighs on him, not because he loved Barney any less, but because death has made everything feel unfinished and confusing.

In the days around the funeral, the boy encounters differing ideas about what happens after death. A friend insists that pets do not go to heaven; a parent suggests that they do; his own father gently admits he does not know. The uncertainty frustrates the boy and deepens his sadness, but it also opens space for honest questions. One afternoon in the garden, father and son talk while looking at the earth, seeds, and compost. The father explains that when living things die, they become part of the soil and help new things grow. The boy is not asked to trade his cat for a flower, or his love for a lesson, but the image makes sense to him. It is specific, concrete, and within his reach.

At the funeral, the family gathers at the small grave. The boy slowly recites the nine good things he has already named. Finally, he finds the tenth: Barney is now part of the earth, helping the garden. That thought does not erase the ache of loss, but it gives him a way to hold sorrow and gratitude together. The goodbye feels more complete.

Themes
The book respects a child’s full range of feelings, sadness, anger, confusion, tenderness, and refuses easy answers. Ritual is shown as healing not because it fixes death, but because it makes room for memory and love. By placing differing beliefs about an afterlife alongside a clear explanation of nature’s cycles, Viorst affirms both uncertainty and understanding. The tenth good thing is not a theological solution; it is a child-size truth about continuity, nourishment, and care.

Style and Illustrations
Viorst’s prose is plainspoken and carefully paced, allowing emotional beats to land without melodrama. Blegvad’s delicate ink-and-wash drawings echo that restraint, depicting kitchens, gardens, and small gestures with understated warmth. The quiet domestic settings emphasize how grief lives inside ordinary days and how family steadiness can help carry it.

Significance
The Tenth Good Thing About Barney remains a widely shared resource for families and classrooms facing a pet’s death. Its enduring strength lies in its honesty: it acknowledges the permanence of loss while offering a truthful, comforting image of how a life continues to matter. By guiding a child from raw absence to remembrance, it shows that naming what was good can be an act of love, and a way forward.