Review by New York Times Review
YOU DON'T WANT to talk to your kids about death. Not your death (dreary thought), their death (unspeakable), death in general: It's all bad. They, however, may be undaunted, even unnervingly fascinated, by the bottomless mystery of inert foreverness. (They are, after all, children.) Luckily, without any help from you, today's tots will soon enough stray onto a vast field of inquiry - literature - fervently devoted to the insult of mortality. In the meantime, you'll find that while picture books have grown increasingly frank on sensitive topics of family structure, disability, race and ethnicity, death remains largely absent, replicating your own woeful silence. But all kids, and especially those who face the loss of a loved one, deserve more than denial, euphemism or sugarcoating. You, in turn, could use help with the conversation - the kind of help that intelligent, unflinching, empathetic stories could provide. A handful of new picture books step into this difficult fray. Each of them is serious, visually sophisticated and well intentioned, and each stumbles a bit when it comes to using its words. Despite its icky title, "Cry, Heart, but Never Break," a 2001 Danish work, is rich and affecting. You'll know something is amiss in Denmark from the moment you open the book to a haunting watercolor illustration dominated by a dusky, rose-smudged sky, shadowy grasses traversed by a black cat, and a slanting old house with a watchful bird perched on top. A long scythe leans by the front door. We learn that four children live in this "small snug house" with their grandmother. "A kindly woman, she had cared for them for many years. Now she had a visitor." The glum intruder, shrouded by a hooded black robe, is recognized by the children, who ply him with coffee to forestall his rendezvous with Grandma. Death, the children learn, can be delayed, but can't be turned away. After offering a clumsy parable about the interdependence of joy and sorrow, Death mounts the stairs to the sick room, summons the old woman's soul to fly off and counsels the children that their "tears of grief and sadness help begin new life." A warm memorial breeze wafts through curtains, and calm acceptance of orphanhood settles - rather too easily - on the still-snug house. Alas, the kids in this book seem hipper to death than Death himself is. The loss of the old woman, and the children's grief, remain oddly abstract. Death also takes anthropomorphic shape in the Norwegian "Life and I: A Story About Death," but here the Grim One bears peculiar resemblance to a waifish European model, clad in a stylish teal unitard with hoodie decorations straight from Gustav Klimt. Marine Schneider's magical illustrations nearly carry the day: Candy-colored and expressionistically distorted, they push organic clutter against empty space in a way that produces a rich sensory drift through death's moody valley. Elisabeth Helland Larsen's text, however, proves fatal. It delivers Death's job description in a New Age murmur, following along as Death goes about her morbid chores on a retro pink cruising bike, collecting animals, the elderly ("those filled to the brim with the wonders of life, as if they were filled to the brim with delicious food"), children and "some inside tummies, those that haven't yet been born." In this vision, Death is one big comfy. Even suggestions of political violence are mollified. Death drops in on a village in flames, remarking, "Sometimes I have to visit many people in the same place.... Holding hands, we need no words, and slowly we walk as one bright flock." It's easy for adults to confuse their desire to console a child with a child's honest need to understand. My kids, at least, were not having it: They were not just bored, but bugged. "Grandad's Island," Benji Davies's second book as author-illustrator after "The Storm Whale," gently respects both the reality of death and the reality of children's inner lives. Round-headed Syd, dressed still in his school uniform, stops by his grandfather's pleasantly ramshackle house and discovers that the old dude is nowhere to be found. Syd locates Grandad in a memorabilia-filled attic, and follows him through a hatch. Suddenly the pair are at sea, en route to a paradisiacal island populated by lavishly colored plants and creatures. Grandad no longer needs his walking stick, and he and Syd, now barefoot, roam the wilds together, building a groovy hut and frolicking in a gleaming waterfall. "It was the most perfect place," Davies writes. "Syd wished they could stay forever." Syd, however, needs to get going, and Grandad poignantly opts to stay. On the way back, "the journey seemed much longer without Grandad. But Syd steered the ship safely home." Davies's elegantly rough illustrations, evoking a child's paintings, tap into the imagination of death with little fuss, and his story declines to offer kids instruction on how to feel. Indeed, "Grandad's Island" doesn't mention death at all, but is deeply in touch with the ways in which loss and abundance commingle in the mind, correcting and assuaging each other. I couldn't quite get over my skepticism about the reissue of "The Dead Bird" with new Illustrations by Christian Robinson, who won a Caldecott Honor for "Last Stop on Market Street." To be sure, Robinson's bold and angular visual style elevates this charming but slight 1938 story by the dead, and beloved, Margaret Wise Brown, she of the never-waning "Goodnight Moon." But not all the way to relevance. A group of children at play - in deep woods in Remy Charlip's original illustrations, in an urban park in Robinson's new ones - come upon an inert but still warm critter. They figure out it is dead, and set about providing it with a proper burial. They dig a grave, decorate it with flowers, sing to the bird and are moved to tears - not by their grief over the bird, with which they had no living connection, but by the gravity of their ritual. For all its willingness to touch flesh and feathers, "The Dead Bird" isn't much about death or at least not the private, emotional problem of responding to death. It's about a social practice. The funeral the kids stage is playacting, a formal gesture without - my apologies, bird - much of a body. Fans of Brown who want to feel the startled hush of eternity are better off opening "Goodnight Moon" to a memorable pair of blacked-out pages stained with the life-and-death salutation "Goodnight nobody." MARK LEVINE teaches at the University of Iowa. His most recent book of poems is "Travels With Marco."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 3, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
The creator of The Storm Whale (2014) offers another thoughtful picture book guaranteed to spark discussion. Young Syd visits Grandad, who takes the boy on an adventure. Opening a hidden attic door reveals an ocean liner that takes the pair to a tropical island where they explore, swim, and relax. When it's time to go home, Grandad decides to stay, and after realizing that he will be happy, Syd returns alone. Davies' digital artwork is rich with saturated colors and full of the details of Grandad's life. The island scenes filled with colorful birds, gentle waterfalls, and beautiful scenery are reminiscent of Richard Egielski's paradise depictions in Arthur Yorinks' Hey, Al (1986). Will young readers get that Grandad dies? Maybe not. What they will understand is that Grandad is gone, he is okay, and Syd has wonderful memories of their times together. And for many, that will be explanation enough. Recommend to young families dealing with loss, especially those who prefer to gloss over the scientific realities.--Weisman, Kay Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When faced with death, children are often told, for better or worse, that the person is in a better place now. In the case of a boy named Syd, he knows for a fact that his Grandad is somewhere pretty spectacular. In this gentle, magic-tinged allegory, Grandad lives in a small house back behind Syd's home. After opening a "big metal door" in Grandad's attic, the two are transported to the deck of a giant ocean liner, which towers over the neighboring buildings in their seaside town. A quick journey takes Syd and Grandad to an island dense with jungle foliage and populated by colorful birds, orangutans, and wonders to discover. Together, they refurbish a raggedy shack on stilts and splash around below a waterfall, after which Grandad tells Syd, "I'm thinking of staying," and the boy returns home. "The journey seemed much longer without Grandad," writes Davies. As with The Storm Whale, Davies offers a story of loneliness and togetherness distinguished by understated, deeply felt emotions and a nautical milieu. Ages 4-8. Agent: Vicki Willden-Lebrecht, Bright Literary Agency. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-Syd pays an ordinary visit to his grandfather's house, when Grandad shows him a mysterious metal door in the attic. Syd and Grandad walk through the door and are suddenly aboard a huge ship. They dock at an island, where Grandad and Syd explore and go swimming. Then Grandad breaks the news to Syd-he is thinking of staying on the island with his jungle animal friends. Syd hugs Grandad one last time and boards the huge ship back to the real world, alone. The next morning, Grandad's house is vacant and the metal door in the attic is gone. Then a toucan delivers a postcard to Syd from Grandad and the jungle animals. This book is innovative and useful as a way to talk about the idea of loss-without ever referring to actual death. Parents and educators can use this to talk with a child about how it's normal to be sad and miss loved ones. It can also be read to explain to children how it might seem strange to see loved ones' old houses empty but that they are in a special place and still love them very much. Cheerful, brightly colored illustrations make this a fine choice to use with the youngest of audiences. Since death isn't directly specified, this title also works for when a child's loved one is moving far away. VERDICT An excellent vehicle to gently approach the topic of loss. Recommended for collections needing these types of materials.-Sara White, Seminole County Public Library, Casselberry, FL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
