After a whole semester teaching all things afterlife and underworld, I can’t tell you how excited I was to have a sneak peek of the amazing Atlas of Afterlives. Written by Emily Hawkins and illustrated by Manasawee Rojanaphan, this is the latest in the ‘Atlas’ series by Wide-Eyed Editions. We already adore Atlas of Lost Kingdoms, but given our mutual love of all things spooky, this one immediately went to the top of our preorder list!
The book takes children on a tour through different afterlife beliefs across the globe, but it isn’t excessively gloomy or morbid – often the bright and engaging illustrations balance out the tone. Each belief is summarised on a double-page spread, with small short paragraphs of text as well as little notes that accompany the images — the 6yo was happy taking turns reading these! It covers the usual popular suspects: we go down to Hades, the Ancient Greek underworld, and encounter Cerberus the guard-dog and Charon the ferryman; we glimpse the Ancient Egyptian Duat and find out about the weighing of the heart. But there’s a wide world of underworlds beyond these! The global range is the most impressive thing about this book, and we loved exploring new and lesser-known locations from Mictlan (Aztec), to Lua-O-Milu (Hawaii) and Adlivun (Inuit). But it doesn’t stop there! There’s also a blend of world religions, including Jacob’s Ladder (Christianity), Jannah (Islam), and the Buddhist underworld.
The illustrations are so beautiful and varied for each location, giving an insight into the type of environment it is imagined to be. That’s not to say it doesn’t also have a range of spooky and unusual characters to meet along the way – the 6yo has been reading about lighthouses and shipwrecks in school, so he was especially intrigued by all the different ghostly ships and boats.
Atlas of Afterlives is basically my ideal book, never mind the 6yo’s! I can’t wait to get us a hard copy when it comes out later this year. It’ll also be such a good example for my own Underworld module students to look at when planning their own educational / creative projects in future years – a handful of them wrote and illustrated their own children’s books this semester, they’ll be delighted to hear there’s a market for them!
wee classics 