Brooks, Bruce. Everywhere. HarperCollins, 1990. ISBN0060207299. 70 pages. 

        Peanuts’ beloved grandfather has suffered a heart attack. Peanuts is sad over the possibility of losing his grandfather. Dooley keeps Peanuts company while the adults in the family attend to Grandfather. Dooley attempts to save the old man by a ritual learned from comic books: killing a turtle and trading his soul for Grandfather’s. With the imaginative assistance of Dooley, Peanuts discovers the healing power of hope and love. 

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Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting. Farrar, 1975. ISBN0374378487. 180 pages.

         The Tuck family has discovered a spring whose water brings eternal life. A man learns their secret and threatens to sell the water to the highest bidder. Mrs. Tuck kills the man and is jailed and sentenced to be executed. Though the family knows she cannot be killed, they worry that their secret will be revealed when they try to kill her.

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Baylor, Byrd. The Table Where Rich People Sit. Simon & Schuster, 1994. ISBN0684196530. 52 pages. 

        Around an old kitchen table, a young girl calls a family meeting to show her parents that they should earn more money so they can have nicer things. As she points out they are not sitting at a table where rich people would sit, her parents calculate the value of the desert hills, the blooming cactus, the calls of eagles, and one another’s company. Soon, she realizes that her poor family is rich in things that matter in life. She concludes that this is indeed a table where rich people sit. 

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Goble, Paul. Beyond the Ridge. Bradbury, 1989. ISBN0027365816. 32 pages. 

        There is no death; only a change of worlds—the author delivers these reassurances to readers in this book, based on the customs of the Plains Indians in America. The book reads like a prayer, expressing specific beliefs about dying. It describes a woman who is called by her long-dead mother to go “beyond the ridge.” After a steep climb, she discovers a world that is abundantly beautiful, and there she finds the familiar faces of people who have passed that way before her.