Minot bound

After a second-half shift at Al's and an appointment with my adviser at the U, Mom and the kids and I will hit the road to North Dakota for Grandma Diane's funeral. Mom and I will be back by Friday, probably with the kids.

I haven't really started my newly topical books, but I was very happy with all three that I picked up for the kids.

Lifetimes is my top choice. This book isn't going to draw out a lot of feelings-talk automatically, but it does paint a beautiful picture of death as an integral part of life, at a level that even a pre-schooler can grasp. My suggestion would be to put this in your child's library well before they are actually facing a loss, to expose them to the idea before they face their own grief.

The Invisible String is another great book, though not specifically about death and grieving. This book would be helpful for kids facing any type of loss or difficulty (and who isn't?) The premise of the book is that an invisible string connects your heart to the hearts of everyone you love. The concept of death is only touched on when the mom character says (spoiler alert!) that the string even extends to the children's deceased uncle, Brian. I would have swapped something like, "People who have died, like Uncle Brian," in for, "Uncle Brian in Heaven." But, that's just me. Overall, a marvelous book, and a great toddler-level way of seeing our interconnectedness with all of humanity and all of life (at least down to house-cats!)

Everett Anderson's Goodbye was the distant third-best book, in my opinion. The review I read that ensured I would buy the book is by a pastor who uses the book extensively. He says that he uses it more with adults that kids, and I think it would be great especially for adults who aren't readers. For kids, however, the narrative was too subtle for them to pick up, I feel.

If one were to buy three children's books for kids experiencing a death of someone close to them, in its place I would recommend Water Bugs and Dragonflies instead. I realize now it was clearly a mistake to not buy it because I objected to one brief passage. The beautiful parable of a water bug becoming a dragon fly is limited, but not ruined by becoming a specifically Christian story in its final pages.