Colman, Penny. Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial. Henry Holt and Co, . 224 pages. ISBN-10: 0805050663. ISBN-13: 978-0805050660.Plot:
Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial covers everything a person would want to know about the historical and cultural practices surrounding death and burial. Colman begins by explaining her reasoning for writing the book, including her own experiences with death. The first two chapters focus on defining and understanding death. She includes personal stories, historical information, and other facts surrounding exactly how humans define and understand the process of dying. The next step is, of course, what happens to a body after death in a chapter over decomposition, embalming, autopsies, and transplants. The next four chapters cover the various ways that people deal with corpses, including burial, cremation, locations, and customs. One of the chapters focuses solely on the way to dispose of corpses, one on items used to contain the remains, one over burial sites, and one over customs and ceremonies. The final chapter covers images of death in art, including statuary, literature, and music. Colman also includes additional information at the end of the book about epitaphs, burial sites of famous people, burial instructions, and gravestone carvings.
Critical Evaluation:
Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial is fascinating. Colman takes a very sensitive topic and addresses it with straight-forward style that is admirable. She manages to combine emotion and fact in a way that makes this book both personal and educational. Her writing is simple, but she doesn’t talk down to her audience. Though this is considered a young adult book, it could easily have been written for adults.
The layout of the book is very functional. Colman chooses to split the subject of death and dying into eight main sections presented in a logical order. By writing about customs and history from around the world, she covers almost every aspect of death that could be of interest. She also includes personal stories from herself and others she has interviewed, as well as photographs. This keeps the book from becoming too clinical in its examination of the subject.
Death is a subject that people fear for many reasons. By choosing to write about the subject in such an informative and sensitive way, Colman has made a great contribution to non-fiction. Reading this book could lead to a really good discussion.
Reader's Annotation:
Penny Colman delves into the fascinating, complicated, and often sad history of death and burial.
Author Information:
Penny Colman was born September 2, 1944 in Denver, Colorado. She also lived in Washington, Oregon, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania all before the age of five. Her family finally settled in Warren, Pennsylvania where they lived on the grounds of the Warren State Hospital where her father worked as a psychiatrist. She attended Western College for Women, but dropped out after two years to hitchhike around Europe. When she returned, she attended the University of Michigan and then went on to receive a masters in Teaching from Johns Hopkins.
She solely writes non-fiction and primarily writes books about women. Her childhood visits to museums and historical sites inspired her love of history, though she noticed that there was often a dearth of information on the historical contributions of women. She has set about to rectify that with her books.
Genre:
Non-Fiction
Curriculum Ties:
History: Dealing with death through the ages
Cultural Anthropology: Death and Burial customs
Science: Embalming
Booktalking Ideas:
- Discuss some burial customs for various cultures.
- Explain Colman's reasons for writing the book as stated on page 9.
- Give a brief overview of some of the topics included in the book.
Reading Level/Interest Age:
14 and older
Challenge Issues:
Some gruesome descriptions
Discussion of death
Challenge Defense Ideas:
- Require the challenger to fill out a written challenge form with clear reasons stated and examples given.
- If not already familiar with the content, become familiar.
- Refer the challenger to the library's collection policy.
- Refer the challenger to reputable reviews of the books, as well as reviews by those in the book's target audience.
Reasons for Selection:
This was listed as a good non-fiction book for teens in our class text. I thought the subject sounded really interesting.
