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Haslbauer, Carla

My Mother's Delightful Deaths

48 pp. | NorthSouth | November, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-0-7358-4456-8 $17.95
(2) K-3 Translated by David Henry Wilson. From the start of this quirky and heartfelt German import, it is clear that there is something a bit mysterious happening. Endpapers show a child peeking out from between red stage curtains; these curtains set the scene for the drama that is the life of a performer's daughter. "My mother can be lots of different people. Sometimes she's nice. And sometimes she's nasty. Sometimes she's quiet, and sometimes she's loud. You see, my mother's an opera singer." The narrator knows that her mother is just acting as she dies onstage, but as the child explains, while sitting in a large theater seat with her knees up to her shoulders and tears streaming down her face, "every time it looks real." Happily, by the time the family leaves for home, the opera star is transformed back into Mother, arm-in-arm with her partner and flanked by the narrator and her smaller sibling. Haslbauer (whose own mother was an opera singer) employs smart pacing and dramatic page-turns as the narrator explains what it's like to be related to someone who is larger than life. Illustrations use unusual angles, exaggerated sizes, and long pencil and brush strokes to emphasize Mother's outsized personality and artistic impact.
Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2022

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