I originally read this picture book (which was originally published in German in 2007) back in April, when I was visiting a dear friend in New Zealand. I was in the middle of a break-up and was feeling pretty overwhelmingly sad, and she had this book checked out from the library and left it outside the door of the room I was staying in for me to read. I read it, and liked it, enough that I kept thinking about it and eventually checked it out from the library back home in Brooklyn.
The art is really lovely, with cut-out style pencil drawings of our protagonists (Duck and Death) and other collage elements, too. The text is straightforward but graceful and sometimes funny, in a way that works with the story, in which Duck learns of the presence of Death in her life/in life in general, and becomes comfortable with him, despite how fearful she is at first. The whole thing is excellent: I mean, look at this page (and don’t mind my hand; I was precariously balancing the book on the arm of the couch to take this picture):
You can see more from this book on Brain Pickings, though scrolling through the images on a screen isn’t quite as satisfying (for me, anyway) as turning pages.
Leave a Reply