Don’t look. Don’t even peek through your fingers.
If you keep your eyes shut, maybe scary things won’t happen – like, for instance, death. Still, you’re curious, aren’t you? Maybe you’ve lost a grandparent or a pet or friend and you have questions. So on second thought, take a peek at “Dying to Ask” by Ellen Duthie & Anna Juan Cantavella, PhD, illustrated by Andrea Antinori and don’t just bury those thoughts.
What happens when you die?
No doubt, you don’t know. None of us do, but when they hold workshops on literature and philosophy, Ellen Duthie & Anna Juan Cantavella say that people seem comfortable asking. This gave them the idea to collect questions from kids from around the world who are curious about death and dying.
The first question sums up what you’re about to learn: will you die?
The answer is yes, but everyone does “sooner or later…” We are mortal and we can’t erase that fact. The thing is, you don’t know where or when and there’s no place to go to find out. It’s true that you’re “probably dying to know more” but you can’t.
When you die, your body will become a skeleton and that could take a while because “Bodies never die all at once.” Another thing: “not all bodies turn into skeletons”; some are cremated, which makes bones into ashes.
There are ways to know for-sure-for-sure that someone is really, actually dead and it’s “close to impossible for someone to be buried alive.” There are many ways to deal with death and many ways to die but right now, heart disease is the top reason. You may live a long time or not, but you can’t live forever and it’s good to talk about death because it takes some of the hurt out of it.
And finally, “Popular culture is full of myths about death” so it’s best to ask an adult if you need to know even more… Wow. Take a look through “Dying to Ask” before you hand it to your child because, while this book is absolutely for a kid, there’s a lot for an adult to learn here, too.
Indeed, authors Ellen Duthie and Anna Juan Cantravella cover a lot of ground in their offerings, from philosophy to psychology and culture to cremation, told in a way that can get a little edgy sometimes, but that doesn’t gloss over the subject. The questions are limited here but the authors don’t seem to want to make anything off-limits in this book – although parents will want to beware: kid-friendliness doesn’t dull the bluntness much and that may upset a child who’s grieving or one that’s prone to frights. Also know that the entries in here are made simple, and may lead to other, deeper questions.
Though the queries in this book are from kids as young as five, because of its complexity, older children will get more out of it than will younger ones. Grab “Dying to Ask” for your nine-to-12-year-old and let them peek through it.
