Death education through literature: a preventive approach

Whether to introduce death education into the elementary school curriculum is still a controversial issue. The purpose of this article is to discuss the possible use of stories from children's readers to deal with death and related topics within the classroom and as a developmental-preventive approach. The impact of the literature experience, affective as well as cognitive, is discussed. Also described are some suggestions with regard to text selection, teaching strategies, and teacher training. It is argued that the use of texts from children's readers can help both teachers and children to deal with death topics indirectly and in a nonthreatening way.