Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Afterlife: Exploring And Accepting Ideas Through Children's Literature, Kiley Vandevelde

Honors Projects

This project is a written and illustrated book for children to assist with the grieving process by exploring different cultural representations of the afterlife. Death is an inescapable part of the human condition. Belief in an afterlife can help children retain a connection to the deceased and can be a useful tool for healing. While very young children (age four to five) inherently believe in existence after death, this decreases after the age of ten. This book targets children aged seven to ten and explains the benefit to believing in an afterlife. It explores different ideas surrounding the afterlife and …

The Legacy Book In America, 1664–1792, Roxanne Harde, Lindsay Yakimyshyn

Zea E-Books Collection

Legacy books in colonial America were instruments for the transmission of cultural values between generations: the dying mother (usually) instructing and advising children on the path to salvation and heavenly reunions. They were a popular and influential form of women’s discourse that distilled the ideologies of the religious establishment into practical and emotional lessons for lay persons, especially the young.

This collection draws together legacy texts written by colonial American women and girls: five mother’s legacy books and two legacies by children, organized here chronologically. These legacies were writ­ten in anticipation of dying, making awareness of death central to the …