After a month off from book reviewing, I’m back and happy to be reviewing a children’s book that feels very at home alongside Iphelia: Awakening the Gift of Feeling. What initially attracted me to Maybe Dying is Like Becoming a Butterfly, which feels well-suited to children as young as preschoolers, was its up-front-ness about the topic at hand: death.
Sometime last year, a congenial house-party chat with an older therapist took a turn toward mortality. “Death anxiety!” he told me. I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but it clicked. I didn’t have to pin the idea down or do any research to know the truth: I have sometimes-overwhelming death anxiety. He recommended Staring at the Sun, a grown-up book by Stanford professor of psychiatry Irvin D. Yalom on “overcoming the terror of death” as its subtitle would have it, which I have yet to read. Maybe Dying is Like Becoming a Butterfly felt like a good start.
Written in simple verse accompanied by lovely images in a soothing color palette, Maybe Dying is Like Becoming a Butterfly tells the story of Christopher asking Grandpa questions about death. He wants to know more. He also wants to pin it down and be reassured. Unlike Christopher, who’s grasping, Grandpa is letting be and letting go. The love between them is palpable, and some of the statements in the book profound. Maybe Dying is Like Becoming a Butterfly makes no promises, and neither does Grandpa about who will die first or what happens after death.
One of the things I appreciate most about this book is that it teaches that different families and different people have different ideas about death and what comes next. It leaves room for everyone’s traditions and can help children (or adults, like myself) who are experiencing seemingly conflicting views of death either within or without.
This beautiful book belongs on every family’s bookshelf or library list. It can lead to deep, meaningful conversations about the death of people, pets, plants, and maybe even relationships, and how to honor them (Christopher lights a candle for Grandpa) when they’re gone.
Editor’s Bookshelf is a regular review of soon-to-be-released books that, in the spirit of Iphelia, asks important questions about how the written word—and in some cases, imagery—are used to help readers reconnect with their feelings, themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Iphelia’s editor, Linsey Stevens, answers these questions—chiming in on who will be most captivated by each book’s contents and how it invites readers to return to a heart-centered way of being.
Maybe Dying is Like Becoming a Butterfly by Pimm van Hest—and illustrated by Lisa Brandenburg—will be available on September 1, 2019, from Clavis Publishing. Like the children’s edition of Iphelia: Awakening the Gift of Feeling, Maybe Dying is Like Becoming a Butterfly includes a resource section for parents and caregivers. For more on Iphelia: Awakening the Gift of Feeling, visit our book page.
