By Laurie Krasny Brown, Marc Brown
A plain question-and-answer guide to death, drawn with cartoon dinosaurs: what dying means, why it happens, what a funeral is, and the different things people believe comes afterward.
It's organized as a list of questions with the answers written underneath. What does alive mean. Why does someone die. What does dead mean. How does it feel. Saying goodbye. Keeping customs. What comes after death. Ways to remember someone. Marc Brown — yes, the Arthur one — draws it all as small cartoon dinosaurs talking in speech bubbles, which is what makes pages this hard bearable in green and yellow instead of photographs. It covers a grandparent, a friend, a classmate, and a pet, so it isn't built around one loss; it's a guide to the whole subject. And it hands over the real words — dead, buried, cremated, funeral, coffin — each one defined and out in the open.
It's for the parent who has run out of words. Somebody died on Tuesday, there's a funeral on Saturday, your child wants to know if Grandpa can still hear things inside the box, and you have nothing. This book has the vocabulary and will say it first so you don't have to go first. It treats a small child as someone with questions and answers them plainly, which can be a relief with a four- or five-year-old, since the practical and slightly gruesome questions are often the ones on their mind. And the cartoon dinosaurs put enough distance between a child and the subject that they can stay in the room for it.