Death in Chilean Picture Books

Valentine's Day was a work day for me at the University of Glasgow. I had a meeting with my supervisors (it went great!), had to help teach Critical Enquiries with Dr Evelyn Arizpe, and attended an unusual presentation for the day - a lecture on "Where do we go when we die? The representation of death in Chilean picture books" by visiting scholar Maili Ow González from the Universidad de Chile. Most of our Children's Lit students were in attendence - they made a good showing for this interesting topic. (I'm the only one with grey hair - photo by Dr Maureen Farrell.)The most popular and important book on death in Latin America, according to the students from the region and Maili, is Es Asi - the pink book.One of the points that truly fascinated me was the breakdown of children's abilities to understand death at various ages. It made me wonder how that would affect a creators decision on how to present death in picture books. I had to include this photo of Maili giving her lecture to show the marriage of cultures and languages talks like this encourage. Not only did we have about ten different countries represented - it all happened in Scotland, where the sugary drink IRN BRU is king (that's an IRN BRU sitting on the table there). I won't say who was drinking it, although I will say it wasn't mine. The stuff tastes like rocket fuel to me - HA! At any rate - it's a real treat to have scholars from around the world talk at the University of Glasgow and this was an especially good one.