(Bookcover compliments of home.iprimus.com.au)
Bibliography
Grimes, Nikki. What is Goodbye? Illustrated by Raul Colon. New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children. ISBN 0787807784
Plot summary
After the death of their older brother, two younger siblings uncover their painful emotions and their family’s journey through grief in poems that alternate between two voices.
Critical Analysis
Acclaimed author Nikki Grimes’ novel in verse, strikes a chord with anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one. The poems, told in alternating voices of a younger brother and sister, trace the emotional journey of the two siblings and their family coping with the unexpected loss of a beloved older brother. Jesse’s straight-forward poems which rhyme in a sing-songy manner well-suited to his young age juxtapose uncomfortably with the raw feelings lurking just under the surface of the rhyme scheme. In contrast, Jerrilyn’s free-verse poems which always follow her brother’s poems in the book reveal the bottled emotions that she keeps hidden from others. The 26 themes with a poem by both children on each “theme” depict the grieving process from the beginning with “Getting the News” (“My ears aren’t working/My hearings broke/Mom’s lips are moving/Is this some joke?”) to “Regrets” and finally “Ordinary Days” (“ Ordinary days are golden, like ancient coins recovered from a treasure hunt. More of them is what I want now that I’ve learned to spend or save each one as if it matters.”)
Raul Colon’s small colored pencil drawings in subdued shades of red, green, blue, brown are at once realistic and surreal. The softness of the images adds to the dreamy, emblematic quality of the scenes depicting symbols of the children’s journey as they sort through their complex emotions. The combination of the two young voices with Colon’s artwork and small size of the book itself create an unobtrusively disarming feel for an emotionally themed book on grief. Best suited to older children, adults will also identify with the universal message of loss and recovery and the uniqueness of each individual’s journey. In her closing author note, Grimes shares “There is no right or wrong way to feel when someone close to you dies.”
Reviews and Honors
· Booklist excerpt: “Moving and wise, these are poems that beautifully capture a family’s heartache as well as the bewildering questions that death brings….”
· School Library Journal excerpt: “Grimes’s novella in verse is a prime example of how poetry and story can be combined to extend one another.”
· Publishers Weekly (3/8/04)
· Kirkus (4/1/04)
Connections
· Create a display or special collection of additional titles dealing with grief. Share the list of books with school counselors to be utilized with students as needed.
Fiction titles on grief to include for younger children :
Everett Anderson's Goodbye (Clifton) ISBN 9780030635182
The Dead Bird (Brown) ISBN 9780064433266
Daddy’s Chair (Lanton) ISBN 9780929371511
Titles to include for older children:
Mother Poems (Smith) ISBN 9780805082319
Locomotion (Woodson)-ISBN 0142415529
Blue Eyes Better (Wallace-Brodeur)-ISBN 9780525468363
· Read more titles by Nikki Grimes, especially those that celebrate African-American heritage including:
Danitra Brown series (Book 1: ISBN 9780688120733)
Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman
Thanks a Million ISBN 9780439352437
Oh, Brother! ISBN 9780688172954
· Connect older students with the book by having them write an elegy of honor or a reflective personal poem about the death of a loved one. (Poems can be realistic or fictionalized.) Encourage students to illustrate with similar symbolic artwork like Raul Colon’s.
