Day of the Dead

by Tony Johnston

Overview

Collected essays by a noted pathologist that lead the reader into an animated world of cadavers, coroners, graveyards, and death rituals. With keen insight and wicked wit, the author explores the culture of death from the perspective of one who routinely confronts mortality head-on. 6 X 6-1/2.

Author Biography: Tony Johnston lives in Southern California.
Jeanette Winter lives in south Texas and New York City.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780613299213
Publisher:	Perfection Learning Corporation
Publication date:	04/04/2019
Edition description:	Turtleback School & Library ed.
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 6.60(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Tony Johnston is the award-winning author of more than one hundred books for young people, including the New York Times bestseller Off to Kindergarten, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, and The Quilt Story, illustrated by Tomie dePaola. She lives in California, where she was born and raised.

JEANETTE WINTER has written and illustrated many books for children, including MAMA, The Librarian of Basra, Calavera Abecedario: A Day of the Dead Alphabet Book, My Name Is Georgia, and Josefina. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

The team that collaborated so gracefully on Diego (1991) returns with another little book showing how a Mexican family celebrates el día de los muertos, the holiday commemorating the dead. Everyone spends days preparing special foods, which are carried in a candlelight procession to the cemetery for a nightlong celebration of singing, dancing, and feasting at the graves of loved ones. A number of Spanish words and phrases are worked into Johnston's simple text, as the children are repeatedly told "espérense"—"wait"—when they try to sample the empanadas (meat pastries) or the pan de muertos (special "bread of the dead," shaped like human figures and decorated with colored sugar). Winter's square acrylic paintings, in rich hues of green, pink, purple, blue, and gold, float within thick black borders that change with each turn of the page. The covers, endpapers, and title page are decorated with silhouettes reminiscent of the cut-paper banners that beautify the ofrendas, home altars bearing candles, fruit, flowers, and photographs of the departed. A warm, fictional introduction for an audience younger than that for the photo-essays by Kathryn Lasky (Days of the Dead, 1994) and Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith

Kirkus Reviews