S End And Sad Goodbyes: Children's Picturebooks About Death And Dying '

For the mystery book talk, I read, “Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters” by Gail Giles.

There is one feeling that unfortunately everyone will deal with at some point in their life. That feeling is grief. Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings, is about grief and reveals that everyone deals with grief differently. Brady Park’s is a regular thirteen year old boy who was living an average lifestyle until Ben, a younger boy that Brady was close to died. Brady showed his grief by blaming it on himself and being upset for what had happened. Ben’s mom, Mrs. DiAngelo, was on the kayak when it sank, but she was fine and got carried back up to the surface by the life vest.

As gloomy as death may seem, in the two stories mentioned, characters whom are close to the deceased family members don’t really feel much except for indifference. In “The Veldt”, Peter and Wendy Hadley both work together to set their parents up for impending death, essentially murdering their parents.

Everybody on this earth is different and they all have a different way of handling the concept of death. In the book, When by Victoria Laurie, a sixteen year old girl, Maddie Fynn, has the ability to see people’s death dates in person and in pictures. When Maddie was in first grade her father died and her mother couldn’t cope with the loss of her husband, so she became an alcholic. Maddie’s mother couldn’t keep a steady job so her uncle helped pay the bills. On the side, Maddie had clients come to her so that she could read their death dates or dates of their loved ones. Everything was going okay until one client had a son that was going to die in a week. The client thought Maddie was lying and it was all a scam until he actually died. After

A Lesson Before Dying, a historical fiction novel set in the 1940s, is written by Ernest J. Gaines. In this novel the reader gets to experience the struggles of a twenty-one year old black man by the name of Jefferson. Jefferson finds himself the sole survivor in a liquor store shooting. Although he is an innocent man, he is found guilty of murder and because of the racist era, he is sentenced to death. Determined to morph Jefferson into a man with dignity before his death, Miss Emma, Jefferson’s godmother reaches out to Grant Wiggins, a teacher at a local school. Although Grant isn’t sure he can do anything for Jefferson, he agrees to visit him in jail. As the days to Jefferson’s execution wane, Grant and Jefferson form a bond that ends up bettering both men.

I believe that we control our own individual lives. In the book Lesson Before Dying I could see that everyone in this book choose what they wanted to do on their own even though some of the decisions were based on others actions I could see that they all had an individual goal and began to pursue their goal from the beginning to the end of the book. The aunt of Jefferson who goes by the name of Tante Lou her goal was to to show Jefferson that he is not a hog and is a Man. Grant wanted a strong relationship not only with Vivian his future wife, but also wanted a strong relationship with Jefferson before he was sentenced to death. Jefferson's purpose was not to think about his own death and this is why he did not want to talk or be around his loved ones because he did not want to think about what he was losing all of these Main characters are symbolism.

Readers are able to connect what is happening in the book (death of family members) to things happening in their life. If one family member dies, though the family member is the only one who died physically, the other family member dies well, on the

In Gaines’ book A Lesson Before Dying it’s about how a small town showing prejudice against a man named Jefferson, who is black and has been convicted of murder he did not commit and condemned to die. In the book, Gaines did not wastes any time creating a story with imagery, tense tones, and symbols that was full of sensitive antagonism and ruthless realism. The three literary devices used in the book are important because it teaches a great a lesson before dying; because “Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free” (Gaines 251). Similar to a scar that does not go away , the depressing unfair atmosphere oozes from the the beginning of the book with unambiguous imagery.

People deal with grief in different ways. As a small child, the way the narrator handles uncertainty and pain is distressing, yet also expected. She finds distractions in the furniture and decorations. The child notices a

The Disney Way of Death explains the unfortunate/sad reaction to the evident loss of a loved one (friends and family). The reactions associated were common characteristics that Americans experience when they encountered death- Invisibility, silence, dispassion, institutionalization and taboo. (Laderman, 2000)

Through this sentimental and powerful novella in verse, Nikki Grimes tells the story of a family who grieves the loss of one of its members. Through 52 poems (26 pairs of verses), the surviving siblings, Jesse and Jerilyn, mourn the death of their older brother, Jaron. The layout of the book is somehow unusual since it lacks a Table of Contents and an Epilogue. There is, however, an Author's Note and an Acknowledgments page at the end of the volume. The verses are arranged in alternate or paired poems of the two siblings. The poems' titles are the same for both children, only being differentiated by the inclusion of their names ('The Funeral-Jesse', 'The Funeral-Jerilyn'). The volume is illustrated by Raul Colon. The soft-colored illustrations

In the beginning of the short story, as Brother reflects on Doodle’s life, the author uses personification and foreshadowing to create a mood of remorse. As he gazes out of the window into his backyard, Brother states that “the graveyard flowers were blooming. ...speaking softly the names of our dead” (Hurst 1). The flowers provide flashbacks of the past, and foreshadow a loss of life. The loneliness felt by Brother causes readers to consider how they would feel if their loved one was gone. As Brother observes the seasons, it is noted that “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” (Hurst 1). The personifications of the seasons as stages in the cycle of life and death creates an unsure and uncertain mood. The shift between seasons creates an idea of change and uncertainty of events to come. Hurst creates a mood of remorse through

Death and dying is a natural and unavoidable process that all living creatures will experience at some point in life, whether it is one’s own person death or the death of a close friend or family member. Along with the experience of death comes the process of grieving which is the dealing and coping with the loss of the loved one. Any living thing can grieve and relate to a loss, even children (Shortle, Young, & Williams, 1993). “Childhood grief and mourning of family and friends may have immediate and long-lasting consequences including depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, behavioral disturbances, and school underachievement” (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2006, p. 61). American children today grow up in cultures that attempt to avoid grief and

When a loved one dies, children handle their grief differently than adults, but they still often grieve very deeply in their own way. Much of the grief children experience comes from the fact that children often lose friends to a sudden death such as a traffic accident. The loss of older loved ones may be more anticipated, such as

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and