Why Read for Gradeschoolers:

Most families struggle to explain what death is to their younger children because they do not want them to be saddened or even fear it. A lot of adults will use phrases such as, “They have crossed over,” or “They are in paradise now,” to explain to a child why they’ll never see that someone again. These explanations seem harmless, however, we have to remember that children tend to take things a little bit too literally and phrases such as these can confuse them even more as they may start to think that the person who has died has a possibility of returning. Since children already learn so much in grade school, why can’t they take a short course about death to prepare them for times when they may lose someone? In “What kids understand about death” Alice Lazar (Ph.D., of Montgomery County Public Schools) and Judith Torney-Purta (Ph.D., at the University of Maryland) interviewed many second graders and found it was the easiest age for a child to understand death, but a lot of these children can’t understand it until they learn that death is irreversible and that it happens to everyone. One reason it is hard for these children to understand is that many of them have not witnessed death yet. So what is the best way to explain the meaning of death to them? Well, books with fiction stories in them can be a great way for them to learn a few lessons and morals. One book in particular that could help with learning about death and dying is The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman which features a boy who was raised in a graveyard and his journey.

In this book, the main protagonist’s family was murdered by a strange man, but somehow he escaped from his crib and crawled to a nearby gravy yard where he is discovered by two ghosts, Mr. and Mrs. Owens. This is where the start of his journey begins as the ghosts in the graveyard adopt him and raise the infant as their own and they end up calling him, “Nobody Owens” or “Bod” for short since they don’t actually know his name. The whole story revolves around him growing up being raised by ghosts, but also trying to be a normal kid. Obviously, like many real children, Bod does not exactly understand death when he is younger because almost everyone he knows is a dead person. What I mean by this is that Bod never actually lost these dead people, to him it was almost like they were alive because he could see and interact with them. He did technically lose his family, but at the time of their murders, he was too young to even remember who they were. Students could relate to this if they have never lost anyone yet because to them the people they see all the time have always been there and it seems like they will always be there when they are young. At the end of the book, Bod is 15 at this point and realizes that his ability to see dead people is fading, which forces him to say goodbye to the ghosts of the graveyard. At this point, he knows he will never see these people again because they are dead and he does not have the ability to see them anymore. This ending can teach students that death is something that takes people away forever, but in a more comforting tone since it is almost a coming-of-age story.

This does not mean that life stops just because someone passes over though and students will be made to understand as Bod still has plans to move forward and live on with his life even after losing everyone. This is also explained in great detail in the paper “I Am Nobody: Fantasy and Identity in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book”, by Tsung Chi Chang, which talks about Bod growing and figuring out who he is as a person. The last sentence of the paper reads, “Through what he learns in the graveyard and his interactions with people in the real world, Bod has realigned himself with his own identity and is ready to explore the ways of the world further.” This shows that Bod is ready to move on and become his own person and explore the world, even without the ones who helped raise him.

Citations:

Chang , T. C. (2015). I Am Nobody: Fantasy and Identity in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Publicaciones Universidad de La rioja. Retrieved December 2, 2022,

Des Moines: Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing. (1993). ProQuest | Better Research, Better Learning, better insights.ProQuest . Retrieved December 2, 2022

Gaiman , N. (2008). The Graveyard Book. HarperCollinsPublishers.