Book: each little bird that sings
Author: Deborah Wiles
Summary of the book:
Unlike the other books I have read and reviewed, this one is 247 pages long. The other books that I had read were somewhere around 20 pages and down. This book is more for a younger adult then it is for a child. Not only because of the length of the book, but also because the book is very sad and just wouldn’t seem to be something that a younger child should read. The story is about a ten year old girl, Comfort Snowberger, who has attended 247 funerals in her life. I saw two things that were sort of ironic in this situation as there were 247 pages in the book, which matches the 247 funerals that she had attended. The second thing that I noticed was that her first name was Comfort and that in the book she knows how to serve others who are attending a funeral or in other words comfort them.
The reason that she has attended so many funerals is because her family owns a funeral home. One day the funerals are a bit more personal to the family as her great-great-aunt Florentine dies. Comfort has to call on all her resources for surviving sadness as she faces the death and funeral of Aunt Florentine. Throughout the book Comfort is having a very difficult time in life. Her cousin peach comes into the picture and “ruins” every family occasion and her best friend even stops talking to her. What she really wants to do is spend time wither her dog, which actually ends up being one of her closet friends.
I won’t give away spoilers like I have in my other book reviews simply because I feel that this is a book that you should read on your own and find out what happens. The biggest thing that I got out of the book was that life is going to be full of sad and disappointing things, but what really matters is if you learn ways of dealing with these things and accepting them.
Critique:
I guess the only complaints about the book, if you can even call them that, would be that the entire story is very sad and it never really has the happy ending that I would assume children books to have, but yet again it is more for a young adult then it is a child.
It really does teach some valuable lessons that I talked about before. Another good thing that it can teach would be how it’s not exactly how you die, but more of how you’ve lived your life, which I think is a very valuable lesson at almost any age that is aware of what death truly is.
One of the most realistic fiction style books are about death so this really fits the description.
Also these types of books should teach some sort of lesson about life to young adults and this also does this very well as I already mentioned. Another thing that can be related to realistic fiction books is the fact that it may be questionable if you want your child or children reading this book because of the topic of death and whether or not it would be suitable.
Books about death are always difficult to read. I would say especially when the main characters family owns a funeral home. It seems to me that they author was trying to say that you don’t truly know how someone feels until you experience what they have. And that is what comfort is doing in this book. She may have been to many funerals, but she didn’t know how the families of the deceased felt until her Aunt Florentine had passed away.
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