The book won the 1992 Gouden Griffel and is frequently used in classrooms and therapeutic settings to teach children how to cope with death.

Frog runs to Pig to tell her he has found a "broken" bird (a songbird resembling a common blackbird).

Duck, who joins the conversation, thinks it is ill, but Hare knows it is dead and solemnly declares that "everything dies."

As they return home at sundown, another blackbird starts singing a beautiful song, "as it always does," indicating that life goes on.

In Pondering: 49 philosophical questions from children, Frog and the Birdsong is the selected reading for a group session on what it means to be dead.