Each Little Bird that Sings by Deborah Wiles

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Audience: 10 and up

Rating: A-

Synopsis:

Comfort Snowberger doesn’t have a typical ten-year-old’s life; she lives with her family at the Snowberger funeral home and has been surrounded by death her whole life, having attended 247 funerals. But when death comes to visit her own family, she isn’t prepared for the emotions that come with it.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) This is a very unusual book. I feel like my synopsis makes it sound a bit morbid, but it isn’t at all. Death is handled with dignity and respect in a way that I’ve never seen in a children’s book before.

But why does the dog have to die! I certainly was far more upset about Dismay than Great-great-aunt Florentine or Uncle Edisto. But Dismay’s death was so much more tragic – he’d just saved Peach and then Comfort had to choose to let him go, so that she and Peach could survive. I can’t imagine having to make that type of a choice.

Each of the characters in this book was pretty unique – I guess they’d have to be to fit in with the plot line. Declaration was one of the ones that intrigued me the most. She seemed so torn by outside forces- her grandmother, her new friends - that she didn’t know how to act or who to be anymore. Declaration’s words to Peach on the hillside were absolutely horrid, even more so because of the consequences, but they were also pretty realistic.

Questions:

How did Comfort’s relationship with Peach and Declaration change throughout the book?

Each character’s name is symbolic; choose one and explain why you think the author picked it.

How has Comfort changed since the beginning of the book?

Write a new verse to Uncle Edisto’s song.

Keep reading!

Paige