When Aunt Mattie Got Her Wings by Mathers - OPTIONAL

Mathers, Petra. When Aunt Mattie Got Her Wings, PICTURE BOOK. $17.99. Content: PG. 

Aunt Mattie is gravely ill and so Lottie is going to see her at the hospital. Mattie dies while she is there and Lottie’s friend, Herbie, comes to comfort her. They reminisce about Aunt Mattie and all the fun they had together. They scatter her ashes in the ocean and have a picnic to comfort one another. 

This wasn’t a terrible book, but it wasn’t spectacular either. Death is always a difficult subject to tackle and Mathers does so in a very straightforward way. Beyond the humdrum content and illustrations, the book will likely create a lot of questions about death from students (and I love a curious student), but these questions will need to be answered by parents. Not necessarily a bad purchase, but librarians will need to be prepared to address (or in some cases, not address) some difficult content. 

EL (K-3) - OPTIONAL. Reviewed by: Shay, School Librarian