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
Originally published in 1938, Brown's The Dead Bird was a standout for its candid discussion of death and grief, and this updated version features warm, playful illustrations from award-winner Robinson. A group of multicultural children are playing in a city park when they happen upon a dead bird. Distressed, they decide to give it a little funeral, the way grown-up people did when someone died. Adorning the grave with a stone and flowers and singing a mournful tune, the children bid farewell to the bird, and they visit the grave every day, until they forgot. It's a sharp but oddly comforting view of death, and though there's no mention of an afterlife, the children's ritualistic mourning has an undeniable spiritual quality. Robinson's blocky, bold illustrations, in thick brushstrokes of vibrant color and minimal, yet expressive faces, are just as soothingly guileless as the mourning children, and are a perfect complement to Brown's plainspoken lines. The original text is timeless, and the modern, cheerful illustrations will help resurrect this classic for a new generation of readers.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Brown's 1938 story, best known from a 1958 version illustrated by Remy Charlip, describes a group of children who discover a dead bird. Robinson (Leo: A Ghost Story) pictures a verdant urban park, where four children-one dressed as a red fox, another wearing blue fairy wings-frolic with a big gray dog. The sad news arrives on the first page: "The bird was dead when the children found it." The frowning children gently lift the small brown bird, finding "it was still warm and its eyes were closed.... But there was no heart beating. That was how they knew it was dead." They solemnly bury the bird under the leafy trees, improvise a mourning song, and surround a stone marker with summer flowers, behaving "the way grown-up people did when someone died." Even as the children imitate grief in response to the wild bird's death, they genuinely grieve the joy that has been lost: "You'll never fly again," they realize. Robinson's illustrations hint at how the improvised funeral enables the children to acknowledge impermanence, his close-ups capturing their concentration as they assemble the memorial. Brown takes a direct approach to a difficult subject, suggesting how community rituals provide solace. Robinson concludes with a wide-angle view of growing trees and the children flying a kite, implying a return to carefree fun and putting a poignant distance between the tiny figures and readers. Ages 4-8. Illustrator's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Brown's classic, featuring children who find, bury, and eulogize a deceased bird, was originally illustrated in 1958 by Remy Charlip. That's a tough act to follow, but Robinson thoughtfully pays homage to his predecessor while bringing something new to the telling. The text is identical, but the book's orientation shifts from horizontal to vertical and from a limited palette to full color. Charlip's version alternates between spreads with sentences on blank white backgrounds and wordless scenes, encouraging unhurried reflection. Robinson's painted and digital compositions (also emphasizing life-affirming green) home in on diverse, expressive faces and pull back to show enchanting woodland scenes; these perspectives similarly help readers engage with and find relief from the emotional content. One girl wears butterfly wings, while a boy sports a fox mask and tail. Along with the dog who licks a sweet, sad face, these details tie the children more closely to the bird's realm. They also support the spirit of make-believe accompanying the decision to "have a funeral and sing to it the way grown-up people did when someone died." Brown's honesty-"That was the way animals got when they had been dead for some time-cold dead and stone still with no heart beating"-has been both lauded and criticized. Robinson provides new access to her rituals and the notion that it is OK, eventually, to return to play-and kite flying. That kite soars up into birdland and references Remy one last time. VERDICT A lovely book befitting its lineage.-Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public Library © 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.
Review by Horn Book Review
This child-centered meditation on life and death was first illustrated in 1958 by Remy Charlip. Robinson's sensitive new mixed-media art, with its personality-rich quartet of young people (one boy wears a fox mask and tail for most of the story) and its city-park setting, elicits the children's deeply felt emotions and their actions to honor the bird's memory. (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Robinson reimagines the 1958 story originally illustrated by Remy Charlip, in which children find a dead bird and offer it a send-off through ritual and song. Brown's lovely, gentle, and reassuring text remains the same. The children find a still-warm bird and experience its loss. Knowing it will never fly again, they create a gravewrapping the bird in grapevine leaves and burying it with sweet-ferns and flowers. Both innocent and wise, the children sing about the bird's death and cry before inscribing a stone to place on top. Robinson stays true to the intent of the original text and illustrations but elegantly improves upon it with cinematic storytelling. His setting is a lush urban park filled with trees, bridges, and ponds, framed by a city skyline. And his characters are diverse in gender and ethnicity but universal in their emotions, curiosity, and playfulness (one wears fairy wings and another a fox costume). While simply rendered, with basic shapes and few brush strokes, the design of the spreads and the progression of images are spatially sophisticated. As in his illustrations for Matt de la Pea's Last Stop on Market Street (2015), the artist's characters and environments have a realness to them, perhaps because Robinson portrays them with such respect, love, and ease. A story about the importance of ritual and the ability for renewal, itself magnificently renewed by Robinson. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
