Death Happens

I love creepy things, I even just bought an amazing copy of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by a tattoo artist and it gives me the creeps. Well not as much as my Ralph Steadman illustrated copy but I love it. And I loved Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies". The story made me laugh and thoroughly made me uncomfortable which it's intended to do. I would read something like this to my child because honestly I'm not afraid to expose them to a book. If they didn't like it I wouldn't read it again but who's to say they aren't like me. I was in love with creepy things since I was a baby, Edward Scissor hands was a childhood favorite movie along with "the Nightmare Before Christmas" and my parents didn't ever try and change my preference away from dark humor. I think that's all this story really is to kids, as adults we can read into anything and see beyond the surface or something. This book is riddled with Death, literally images of death and dying and Death himself. I think that's something relevant to all historical period. People die, it's going to happen, as the Tropic of Cancer references in the beginning of the story Entropy with weather all way happening and can't be stopped, that's the same explanation of death. He's coming, it grows nearer and Gorey doesn't shy away from the subject instead he exposes it to children. He breaks a barrier that shelters a child from reality and shows them death is apart of life, it's as simple as the ABC's and is shouldn't be something we are afraid of, it's just something to accept and move on from.