Have you ever wondered why a butterfly lives for only a few weeks? Or why a tree lives for hundreds of year?

You may have been sad when someone in your family, or a favourite pet became sick and died.

There is a beginning and an ending to everything that is alive. In between is a lifetime. Dying is a much a part of living as being born.

Beginnings and Endings is a moving book for children of all ages, even parents too. It lets us explain life and death in a sensitive, caring, beautiful way, with large, wonderful illustrations, it tells about plants. About animals. About people. It tells that dying is as much a part of living as being born. It helps us to remember. It helps us to understand.

The book that explains—beautifully—that all living things have their own special Lifetimes.

Author Bio:

For over twenty years, Bryan Mellonie‘s Beginnings and Endings with Lifetimes In Between has been a wonderful source of comfort for both children and adults, with its sensitive discussions about death and beautiful celebration of living. Lifetimes is currently listed with many organisations that deal with difficult issues such as recovery from sickness and disease and dealing with the inevitability of death from someone suffering a terminal illness.

Illustrator Bio:

Robert Ingpen as an exceptional illustrator, combining fantasy with science and history with the present. His illustrations for Beginnings and Endings with Lifetimes In Between are an exquisite example of his talent. Robert Ingpen won the international Hans Christian Anderson Medal in 1986, for his illustrations, and the Dromkeen medal in 1989.

Review:

When grieving a diagnosis that meant my mom’s days were few, this book was a lovely, peaceful, straightforward look at life and death. It was comforting that it does not address theories of afterlife or contain platitudes. It simply talks about lifetimes, their beginnings, middles, and ends.

This was the only book about death I could read to my children without crying. It let us soak in the reality of life and death and find it lovely. Later we could talk about our hopes and fears, but during the book we felt the calm rhythm of the mystery of life.

• Soft cover (Picture book)
• Age range 5+
• Full Colour
• 40 Page