If you've ever lost anyone -- or anything -- that you loved, let Comfort Snowberger show you how to make it through. Author Deborah Wiles selects perhaps the hardest issue for children -- and grownups, as well -- to comprehend, and turns it into the stuff of good storytelling. "Each Little Bird That Sings" -- and the emotional travails of its heroine, Comfort -- is a thought-provoking, hard-headed look at death, as well as being a hearty celebration of the "messy glory" of life. The novel's first line is an absolute winner: "I come from a family with a lot of dead people." But Comfort's colorful family leads by example when it comes to knowing how to live.
Wiles' story goes right to the heart of the matter, and a funeral home provides the perfect setting. Yes, a funeral home, because that's where 10-year-old Comfort Snowberger lives, with her Uncle Edisto, great-great-aunt Florentine, her parents, her dog Dismay and her little sister, Merry. This is where her family conducts funeral services and organizes viewings and visitations for the living. (And if you don't know what a viewing is, take heart, Comfort's rather unusual obituaries -- she calls them "life notices" -- tell you everything you need to know.)