Death Is Stupid by Anastasia Higginbotham

These were nice people, but entirely unhelpful. Also, I could understand that he wasn’t going to ask for pancakes-first because no one who wakes up in a hospital with a tube in his nose is going to ask for breakfast and second because my father ate eggs. At the age of seven, I knew this was ridiculous because all of our relatives had come to the hospital and everyone was stone faced. When my father was in a coma, people kept telling me that he would wake up and ask for pancakes. Adults feed into this perception by saying things like, “Grandma is in a better place now,” “God doesn’t do anything without a reason.” “This sad feeling will pass.” They aren’t making it easier for the children, they are making it easier for themselves. They see adults behave childishly, irrationally, and inappropriately. Children of tragedy experience a moment where they are forced to grow up and see that adults are full of it most of the time. Grieving children and children of divorce learn way too early that adults are emotional children. This gives the story a very personal touch, as she has created images with her personal objects.By Katherine Thome 0 Radical Empathy: DEATH IS STUPID, an Interview with Anastasia Higginbotham

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. 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. 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. 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. His more concrete understanding of death brings him out of the book slightly, so that he does not fit fully within their narrative. 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. It also brings up the sometimes difficult and controversial topic of dealing with death.Īll 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. 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. 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. Publisher and Year: The Feminist Press, 2016 Author and Illustrator: Anastasia Higginbotham

Death Is Stupid by Anastasia Higginbotham