100 books like Smart Girls Don't Wear Mascara

I love picture books that aren’t cookie-cutters and break rules! This one checks all the boxes! It has 80 pages which is pretty much unheard of in picture publishing because most publishers still seem to think that for some reason kids only have the attention span of 24-32 pages. The story manages to be incredibly meaningful and current, political, socially aware, and about pasta all at once, and the illustrations capture a spontaneity and silliness that I adore! You’ll be left wanting to be more politically active and hungry for pasta—what’s not to like?! 

I loved that this lift-the-flap Usborne book not only focused on where human babies come from but also included facts on animal babies.

This helps children understand that even in nature, babies are born, and just like human babies, they grow and are taken care of by their parents. I also liked the vivid illustrations that helped to complement the Q&A format of this nonfiction book.

There’s plenty to count on the pages, but this book soars by stressing the repetition of events in the lifetimes of spiders, snakes, kangaroos, and other animals. The word “amazing” in the title sets a bar that’s met as we learn that a woodpecker will drill thirty holes in trees. A giraffe will sport 200 spots. And there’s much more for eager readers to count.

Thomas Lynch does a masterful job in The Undertaking offering a behind-the-scenes look at the funeral profession. Using beautiful, lyrical prose to present a topic (i.e., death) that is often ugly and hard to stomach, and rears its head at the most inopportune times, Lynch offers an unflinching look at what he calls the dismal trade. His deep connection with death and dying translates to the reader not only feeling connected with the subject matter, but empowering the reader to connect with the next death event in their life. Take it from me, someone in the profession, this book is as authentic as they come. A must-read. 

I studied the post-modernists in college, and find Barthelme to be the funniest and most likable of that group. His collection of short fiction, Sixty Stories, is my desert island book, but he also wrote a few novels that I like, especially The Dead Father. The dead father looms large in the ethos of his society, and is also literally big—3,200 cubits long. And the dead father is not really dead—though all agree he’s past his prime. So, a road trip is organized: nineteen of his followers attach a cable to drag the massive, complaining figure to a cliff at the edge of the world. A truly witty and absurd little book.

I love this book because it’s a pure and simple description of the physical reasons our lives end. I don’t believe anyone has ever brought death down to earth like Dr. Nuland.

I liked his book so much that I arranged to meet with him. I found him to be the same clear and compassionate person (and doctor) who appears on every page of his book.

What I admire the most is how he manages to describe some of the deadliest human diseases from the inside out, writing so clearly that readers can relax into understanding and let go of their worries without thinking.

This book by Celeste Ng is one of my favorite novels. It’s a beautifully told literary mystery that examines the lives of the five members of the Lee family. Ng masterfully writes from several points of view while unraveling the narrative that led to the death of the oldest Lee daughter by drowning. Was it suicide, or was she killed?

The story weaves in and out of the past, presenting each character’s aching need to belong and be accepted by those they love. There are no villains, but there are flawed parents who push their children to be reflections of their own desires and are driven to fit into a society that rejects them on the basis of either race or gender.   

I love this book partly because it’s a great source of facts and statistics about death and dying throughout the ages.

However it also tells a compelling story of how dying has changed: from short lives often ended abruptly by accident or infectious disease, to what sociologists call ‘the predictable death trajectory’ of gradual death from the diseases of old age and modern lifestyles.

I’m also intrigued by the author’s vision of death and dying in the future: maybe medical advances will even conquer death itself.

In A Ring of Endless Light, sixteen-year-old Vicky Austin has to come to terms with death from all directions, starting with the funeral service of Commander Rodney presided over by her grandfather, who is dying of cancer. Watching her grandfather deteriorate over the summer on Seven Bay Island is hard as it is, but it’s complicated even more when Vicky has to juggle the romantic interest of three very different guys: Leo, an old friend and Commander Rodney’s son; Zachary, whose attempted suicide caused Commander Rodney’s death; and Adam, her older brother’s friend, who offers her an amazing chance to work with dolphins, something that gives her a break from the constant hard in her life. 

I love this emotionally heavy novel, largely due to Madeleine L’Engle’s beautiful, descriptive writing. A Ring of Endless Light finds beauty in struggle and sorrow, and even in death. Ms. L’Engle’s novels always… show more.

Modern medicine has dramatically extended life expectancies. But as our life spans extend, our fear of death grows. As our hope of living a long life and seeing our children survive grew, we became more rather than less anxious about losing out. We might have expected the opposite. Aries vividly illustrates how people viewed death as a part of life before the nineteenth century and how they reconciled themselves to it. He picks out 1886 as the point where Tolstoy in The Death of Ivan Illych recognized that medical advances were creating anxiety rather than hope. This book may make you less fearful of death. It will ask you whether you can now achieve serenity half as well as those before us did and whether medicine is bad for our sanity?