Cynthia Astor has given us a valuable book for helping children in their experience of the death of a friend or family member. She has written it out of her own experience of the unexpected death of her adult daughter and the need to help her granddaughter cope with her daughter's death. It could be used educationally to help young people look at the question of death or experientially at the time of the death of soemone to whom they are close. It could be read to a single child or a group or used as the basis of a worship service on death. The story is enriched by Anthony Turpin's delightful illustrations.

The story is set in a small community on Willoughby Island off the coast of Washington. Emmaline, age ten, learns the shattering news of the death of Cecilia Fantini, her piano teacher of four years. She attends the funeral, her first, and joins others in saying their goodbyes.

Emmaline cannot bring herself to resume her piano lessons with a new teacher. After some three months pass she grows concerned as she becomes aware that her memories of Mrs. Fantini are fading. She feels disloyal when she can't quite see Mrs. Fantini's face or hear her voice any more. Bothered by this, she goes to three people who were close to Mrs. Fantini: the owner of the Island Deli, the owner of the Village Bookstore, and Mrs. Fantini's husband. "How do you remember Mrs. Fantini?" she asks each of them.

Each has a small ritual which they describe to Emmaline and which, more importantly, they share with her. One picks up a shell or stone at the beach and leaves it at Mrs. Fantini's grave. Another writes a message to her on a butterfly kite and flies it as high as she can. Mrs Fantini's husband lights a candle and lets it burn all day. And all three end their rituals by singing Mrs. Fantini's favorite song "All Through the Night" -- the song is printed with music at the end of the story.

Through these experiences, Emmaline has become ready to take up her piano lessons again. "Mrs. Fantini would want me to," she tells her mother. The new teacher invites Emmaline to walk with him to the gravestone and on the way she tells him about each of the rituals. At the grave they sing the song together and she is aware that like the song, Mrs. Fantini's memory will be a part of her forever.