Lifetimes ~ A Beautiful Way to Explain Life and Death to Children is a book I have read and used many times with children.

Robert Ingpen is an award-winning illustrator of numerous books, including The Encyclopedia of Events That Changed the World, The Encyclopedia of Ideas That Changed the World, and The Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places (all Penguin Studio). A beautiful children's book about the cycle of life for all living things-animals, plants, humans, bugs. Eden…I know you have an army of people around you – and little old me has you in my thoughts and prayers. Robert Ingpen is an award-winning illustrator of numerous books, including The Encyclopedia of Events That Changed the World, The Encyclopedia of Ideas That Changed the World, and The Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places.Accompanied by some excellent illustrations of plants, animals and people which also help convey the theme of the book, Lifetimes is a gentle, sensitively written book that both children and adults find comforting and reassuring when dealing with a difficult topic. It helps young children to understand that when they step on a bug, they end a lifetime for the bug.

He would ask for the book when he’s feeling worried about death but for the most part he doesn’t get upset about it anymore. Although death can be a sensitive and sometimes difficult subject to address, this book was very comforting. The book's authors conclude with "So, no matter how long they are, or how short, lifetimes are really all the same. Our lives are mostly longer than those of butterflies, shorter than those of trees, but no matter how long we live, we are also beautiful and fragile creatures.

Later we could talk about our hopes and fears, but during the book we felt the calm rythm of the mystery of life. Throughout the book, the lifetime is explained as a beginning and an end, with living in the middle; it is established several times that this is true of all living things. The images are very old fashioned and dark colours made this a very dull and lifeless, pardon the pun! This book is perfect for Montessori families, for atheists, for those who practice zen meditation and for believers whose faith is rooted in the bliss of real life truth, even when it seems harder then ever. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.