Why Do People Die?: Helping Your Child Understand-With Love and Illustrations

by Cynthia MacGregor

Grandpa has just died ... and your child is confused, upset, and bewildered. What is death? Where has Grandpa gone? What will happen now? She turns to you for answers, comfort, and help, but death isn't an easy subject to explain to kids (especially in the three-to-nine-age range), and since you yourself are in emotional pain, it's harder than ever. Yet you know she deserves, and needs, a straightforward, comforting, reassuring answer ...."Why Do People Die?" guides parents through the inevitable questions, emotions, and fears associated with death. Written in a friendly, reassuring tone, and with respect for the beliefs of different religions, this book comforts both parents and children. Understanding the thoughts and worries that plague children, this book offers answers to tough questions like
-- What is dying?
-- Is it normal to cry?
-- What happens at funerals?

Questions about death must come up sooner or later in every family. If it is not a family member who stirs them, it is a neighbor, a friend, or even a pet. "Why Do People Die?" helps to alleviate the pain, stress, and uncertainty that children face.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Prolific author Cynthia MacGregor has had 54 (at last count!) books published conventionally and another over-50 published as e-books. A full-time freelance writer/editor, she works from a home office In Palm Springs FL, just outside West Palm Beach, where she writes books, ghostwrites books for others, writes “almost anything if the price is right” (web copy, catalog copy, advertisements, business materials, and lots more), and edits books, magazines, websites, and “whatever else needs editing.”

She loves writing so much that it’s even one of her hobbies. For example, she writes all the plays produced by the Palm Springs Players, a South Florida community theatre group, for which she gets “no money but lots of enjoyment.” She also enjoys wordplay with an online punsters group, PUNY, and when possible travels to the annual O. Henry World Championship Pun-Off, a wordplay event held every May in Austin, TX, where she has appeared some years as a competitor and other years as a judge.

Cynthia is site owner of both www.TheSoloParent.com and www.ThePublicApology.com and is producer and host of Solo Parenting, a weekly TV show seen in South Florida, whose audience is single parents, whether divorced, widowed, or never-married, custodial or visitational, moms or dads.

Loving her career, Cynthia believes herself truly blessed and says, “There is no one in the world whom I’d want to trade lives with.”

Reviews

[Andie]

This book walks through death, funerals, grief, etc. by using an imaginary Uncle Harry. This makes everything they talk about really concrete and specific, which is helpful for children, especially if they haven't lost anyone and you're preemptively discussing death with them, but also is helpful if there has been a loss because it creates some distance (ie instead of thinking about your actual grandpa you are thinking about fake Uncle Harry). The illustrations are funny in a way that sort of reflects how bizarre funerals and grieving adults can seem to kids, and it adds some levity for both parent and child.