Ocean State Libraries

"A comic, bittersweet tale of family evocative of The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Everything Is Illuminated Alexander 'Sasha' Karnokovitch and his family would like to mourn the passing of his mother, Rachela, with modesty and dignity. But Rachela, a famous Polish émigré mathematician and professor at the University of Wisconsin, is rumored to have solved the million-dollar, Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem. Rumor also has it that she spitefully...

"In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is a singular collection of essays that weaves together history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief. Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds--from the world's...

"This book explores the death of a loved one through the parallel experiences of other species of animals, similar to Elin's treatment of nature in You Are Stardust and problem-solving in Wild Ideas. As with Elin's previous picture books, A Last Goodbye will combine simple, poetic text with a "big idea"--in this case, the idea that death is a natural part of our lives and that many species experience sadness and mourning when their loved ones are...

"Death in early New England came early and often during those harsh first decades of settlement. Epidemics, hunger, accidents and childbirth contributed to a heavy toll in New England. Disease in some cases erased entire families, and almost always affected the majority of individuals in the communities. For most families, death was still a private affair. Traditions brought over with European customs and others that were strictly American were eventually...