If
you’re sort of messed up like me and you
think that mixing childhood innocence with
the gross and macabre is really funny,
you’re going to love A Child’s Guide to
Death. Although the cover design,
written in a typeset that resembles the
trademark Disney font, makes the book easily
confusable for an actual children’s book,
this book is obviously only for us
(slightly) older kids.
A
Child’s Guide to Death covers death from
“A” to “Z”. Starting with Auto Erotic
Asphyxiation and wrapping it up with Zombie
Apocalypse, there are 26 gruesome ways to
die covered in this book. I found myself
cringing at certain parts and almost falling
down laughing at others. I’ll be honest, “A
furious force of chocolate and raspberry jam
colored speckles accompanied by tender,
blood-coated anus tissue…” kind of made me
throw up in my mouth a little, but “The
coolest piercing is aortal, but you never
get the chance to show it off” made me want
to point and laugh at my heavily pierced
fellow Cinema Eulogies reviewer, Fuctup.
The writing has a tinge of politics in it;
some pages reference ethnocentrism,
political parties, and organized religion,
but I promise it’s only serious for about
.03 seconds.
Accompanying each letter is a dark, comical
illustration by Darin Malfi, done in only
black and white, with the occasional red
blood splatter when necessary. “Lactose
Intolerance” and “Obesity” are personal
favorites (because let’s face it, we all
imagine that morbidly-obese people will die
from some weird, fat-related freak
accident). The only illustration I was
disappointingly like, “wtf?” at was the
illustration for “Mass Hysteria” which is
simply the words “MASS HYSTERIA” repeated in
white on a black background… but then again,
I really can’t think of a good visual
representation of mass hysteria, either. I
recognized Malfi’s illustration for
“Republicans”, which shows a vampire
President Bush feeding on the Statue of
Liberty’s blood, from a cover of The Village
Voice that I saw once, but I don’t know who
copied off of who on that one.
All in
all, A Child’s Guide to Death is
definitely worth spending $14.95 on. I
wouldn’t suggest leaving it on your coffee
table when you expect your 6-year-old nephew
to visit, but it’s definitely one of those
books to have on hand when you have a girl
at your house and you need something to talk
about (as in, “Hey, wanna see something
fucked up?”). She’ll either laugh at how
fucked up it is and fall hopelessly in love
with you (or at least give you a hand job),
or punch you in the face and immediately get
a restraining order, but at least you’ll be
entertained.
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