Author and Illustrator: Anastasia Higginbotham
Publisher and Year: The Feminist Press, 2016
Number of Pages: 65
Genre: Realistic fiction
This book is about a little boy whose grandmother has just died, and the narrator discusses with the boy the different ways adults talk (or avoid talking) about death. Their conversation, as well as the interactions the child has with adults around him, highlights the fact that children are much more perceptive and literal than adults believe. It also brings up the sometimes difficult and controversial topic of dealing with death.
All of the images in the book are positioned within a white frame of the page, but the little boy breaks the border with the tips of his body. This to me speaks of his refusal to go along with what the adults are saying to him — his grandmother is not asleep, but dead. His more concrete understanding of death brings him out of the book slightly, so that he does not fit fully within their narrative. Also the boy’s grandmother and her possessions go outside the frame as well — this reflects her similar personality to the boy and the fact that she is gone from this world. The pictures are framed to reflect windows into the adults’ view of death and dying, and the boy instead uses them as doors to move outside of their perspective into his own.
The illustrations and pages in this book were made by hand by the author: she drew and collaged on brown paper, then photographed the resulting images and printed them in a book. Her author’s note states that she has been making books by hand her whole life as a way to cope with change and growth. This gives the story a very personal touch, as she has created images with her personal objects.
