When Aunt Mattie Got Her Wings: with audio recording

by Petra Mathers, Petra Mathers (Illustrator)

Overview

Lottie the Chicken deals with the loss of Aunt Mattie in this gently sad and sweetly funny picture book that explores the death of a loved one, in the tradition of Judith Viorst’s The Tenth Good Thing about Barney.

Aunt Mattie has died. But before she went, she got to say good-bye to Lottie. Then she got to follow a light to a bustling gate. (A gate that sounded a lot like a busy airport!) And there she found a crew of friends who were waiting to take off with her on a new journey.

Will Lottie and Herbie be able to overcome their sadness? They will, with time, and by taking a journey of their own—a journey filled with a little heartache, a lot of happiness, and a batch of Aunt Mattie’s favorite peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. (With bananas, of course!)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481410458
Publisher:	Beach Lane Books
Publication date:	09/09/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Lexile:	AD500L (what's this?)
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Petra Mathers (1945–2024) was the author and illustrator of many picture books, including her beloved Lottie series. Lottie’s New Beach Towel was Book of the Year for Parenting Magazine, and Lottie’s New Friend was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Book and won the Silver Medal from the New York Society of Illustrators. Petra and her husband, author and photographer Michael Mathers, lived in Astoria, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

07/01/2014
K-Gr 2—In her latest installment in the "Lottie" picture book series, featuring the likable chicken and her fine-feathered friends, Mathers explores death with a gentle, yet matter-of-fact, straightforwardness. Lottie's Aunt Mattie is ninety-nine years old and, as best friend Herbie explains, "her motor is all worn out." Lottie travels to the hospital to visit her aunt, for what "may be the last time," along the way reminiscing about fond times spent together. When Lottie finally arrives at Aunt Mattie's bedside, Mathers does not shy away from the gravity of the situation. Lottie is shown holding her aunt's hand, a tear falling from her eye. Aunt Mattie talks about a group waiting for her at the gate; she imagines a cadre of birdie friends next to a commercial airplane ("Out of This World Airlines"), waving and greeting her as she ascends. Soon after, Aunt Mattie dies and Lottie and Herbie must wait for her ashes and deal with their grief. Mather's simple watercolors, constrained within boxed frames on most pages, serve to focus the emotional impact of the sad events, without overwhelming readers. Text that includes terms such as "dead," "funeral home," and "cremated" offer a refreshingly factual and specific depiction of death and dying. While Lottie and Herbie experience the heartache of losing a loved one, they comfort each other and find strength in remembering Aunt Mattie and continuing her tradition of picnicking on Pudding Rock while eating Mattie's signature sandwich: peanut butter and jelly with bananas. A wonderful addition to collections on death and grief for children.—–Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

07/21/2014
Best friends Lottie the chicken and Herbie the duck from Lottie’s New Beach Towel and its sequels face the death of Lottie’s Aunt Mattie. Their sorrow is palpable, yet the story requires familiarity with Mathers’s characters. When Herbie learns that Mattie is ailing, he protests that she is a nurse. “She isn’t sick; she’s ninety-nine years old,” Lottie replies. “You mean it’s like her motor is all worn out?” Herbie asks, his metaphor complicating the information about nursing and old age. Lottie hurries to the hospital and finds Mattie gazing out the window at a billboard picturing a passenger jet; after a bit of conversation, Mattie closes her eyes peacefully. A wordless page pictures a group of birds welcoming Mattie to a plane labeled “Out of This World Airlines”—the source of the book’s euphemistic title. Mathers’s landscape layout moves the action ahead in placid, thoughtful, comics-style panels; Herbie arrives to comfort Lottie, and the friends celebrate Mattie’s life and scatter her ashes. Heartfelt though it is, this tale muddles the common experience of grief with distracting extraneous details. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"For its wistful yet whimsical and deeply comforting description of grief, June's Sentence of the Month goes to Petra Mathers for this line from When Aunt Mattie got her wings: "Maybe our hearts ache because Aunt Mattie is moving in.""

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