The End: Death and the Afterlife
We’re all going to die.
This probably isn’t news to you. But it’s still a difficult concept to get our heads around, since being alive is all we really know. It’s even harder for children – after all, they just got here. Their first encounter with death – usually of a pet or an older relative – can be baffling, even frightening. Many adults turn to books as a means to expose children in advance to the concepts of mortality, grief, and (for some) an afterlife in a relatively safe, detached environment; or as a kind of bibliotherapy to help a child cope after the loss of a loved one. The good news: if you’re looking for a children’s book about death, there are PLENTY to choose from.
James Janeway. A Token for Children: Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children: in Two Parts. Stanford, New York: printed by Daniel Lawrence for Henry & John F. Hull, 1803.
The title pretty much says it all. Janeway was a Puritan minister, and he published this collection of stories in 1672 to help good little Puritan children prepare their souls for heaven. As he says in the introduction, “They are not too little to die… not too little to go to hell.” For the next two centuries this remained one of the most popular children’s books in England.
Charles Lamb. Tales from Shakespear: Designed for the Use of Young Persons. London: Printed for Thomas Hodgkins at the Juvenile Library, 1807.
No one does death like Shakespeare. Swordplay, stabbing, drowning, poison, madness and suicide are standard plot elements in his histories and tragedies – essential for keeping his rowdy, boisterous audience entertained. Charles Lamb and his sister Mary kept the violence and intrigue in their adaptations, but toned down the language to make the stories accessible to young readers.On a side note, the Lambs knew a little something about madness and murder. Charles was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. Then Mary, a 31-year-old spinster, snapped under the strain of being the primary caregiver for the whole sickly extended family… and fatally stabbed her mother with a kitchen knife.
Louisa May Alcott. Little Women. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869. Second printing.
The third of the four close-knit March sisters in Alcott’s novel, Beth is so sweet, selfless, and pious that she seems too good for this world. James Janeway would have been proud of how stoically she bears her illness, and how unwavering her faith is in a heavenly hereafter.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The Yearling. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. New York: Scribner’s, 1939.
Fred Gipson. Old Yeller. Illustrated by Carl Burger. New York: Harper, 1956.
It’s hard to make it through the American school system without being required to weep your way through at least one Dead Dog Book. You know the pattern:
Boy (almost NEVER a Girl) acquires Dog (or Deer or Pony – the species is incidental)
Boy loves Dog
Dog loves Boy
something Very Bad happens
Boy either: a) inadvertently causes Dog’s death or b.) has to kill Dog himself
Boy becomes Man. A very, very sad Man.
Cynthia Rylant. Dog Heaven. New York: Blue Sky Press, c1995.
If a reader is suffering from the after-effects of a Dead Dog Book, this is the cure. Rylant has imagined the perfect afterlife for dogs – running through endless fields, barking at ducks, and all the angels have doggie biscuits in their pockets.
Katherine Paterson. Bridge to Terabithia. Illustrated by Donna Diamond. New York: Crowell, c1977. First edition, fourth printing.
Inspired by the accidental death of her son’s friend (struck by lightning!), Paterson wrote this sensitive story about a friendship between two imaginative children, and the guilt and grief one feels at the sudden and oh-so-preventable loss of the other.
Neil Gaiman. The Graveyard Book. Illustrated by Dave McKean. New York: HarperCollins, ca. 2008.
After the brutal murder of his family, a baby escapes and finds an unlikely refuge. With a playful nod towards Kipling, Gaiman’s story centers around a boy raised from infancy by – not animals in the jungle, but ghosts in a graveyard. And a vampire. And a werewolf. And a witch – well, the ghost of one. Even with all the horror and violence, it’s a charming view of the afterlife.