Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children

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especially if you have a little one that has already started to think about it (because of a loss of a loved one or a pet). I highly recommend the book, that makes one of the most difficult topic in life, natural, real and much more easy to explain.

An exquisitely illustrated and plainly written book, it speaks clearly to the children about a complicated subject. I'm not sure about some of the facts--some butterflies live longer than what was stated in the book.The message, communicated as much through the graceful illustrations as through the words, is that the brevity of these creatures lives does not make them less beautiful or wonderous. It reads more like nonfiction, and it could be a good place to help start explaining death to little ones, especially if the child is very interested in facts or nonfiction. I first read the book to my son when he was three and he asks for it now at five whenever we hear about death or illness in the news or among our friend. Using examples from nature (like ants, crabs, trees, butterflies, kookaburras and rabbits) this book explains that all living things are born, live for a lifetime, and die. The images are very old fashioned and dark colours made this a very dull and lifeless, pardon the pun!

This is a great book that talks about death as a natural thing without delving into topics like religion. Note: some are religous or concern afterlife concepts and some do not:When Dinaosaurs Die by Laura Krasney Brown and Marc BrownWhats Heaven? This statement either reflects the authors' intent on only dealing with the concept of physical death, or it could be interpreted as their belief statement. As a public school librarian, I would say that "Lifetimes" is an effective picture book for an adult to share with a child (or children) in dealing with the subject of death.A couple months ago, when my daughter's balloon popped and she was very sad, she said "Dad, I guess my balloon's lifetime is over", and then she went to throw it away.