Friends in Books

These are good books for you to read any time, but especially at this Easter season as you think about death and resurrection. Other books you might enjoy are The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown, Grover by Vera and Bill Cleaver, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, and Our Eddie by Judith Ish-Kishor.

Wings of the Morning
by Julia Cunningham; photographs by Katy Peake (Golden Gate).

A lonely little girl on a walk one morning finds a sleeping bird in the dust just off the road. She tries to help it fly until she realizes it can’t because it is dead. But afterward on her morning walks she always remembers the bird.

The Tenth Good Thing about Barney
by Judith Viorst; illustrated by Erik Blegvad (Atheneum).

When a little boy’s pet cat named Barney dies, his father and mother help him with a funeral. Then his mother tells him to try to think of ten good things about Barney. It is quite easy to think of nine good things, but that tenth one is difficult. What do you think it is?

Annie and the Old One
by Miska Miles; illustrated by Peter Parnall (Little, Brown).

Annie cannot understand why her grandmother, called the Old One, must die. She does everything she can to prevent it from happening. This beautiful book about a little Navajo girl tells much about living and dying.

The Boy Who Tried to Cheat Death
adapted from a Norwegian folktale by Charles Mikolaycak and Carole Kismaric; illustrated by Charles Mikolaycak (Doubleday).

This old Norwegian folktale is about a boy without a name who meets Death one day. The boy bargains with Death so that he can heal people and never die himself. This is an especially beautiful book—one to read, look at, and think about.

From Wings of the Morning

From The Tenth Good Thing about Barney

From Annie and the Old One

From The Boy Who Tried to Cheat Death