Days Of The Dead

THE DAYS BETWEEN Christmas and New Year’s Eve are dead days, when spirits roam and magic shifts restlessly just beneath the surface of our lives. A magician called Valerian must save his own life within those few days or pay the price for the pact he made with evil so many years ago. But alchemy and sorcery are no match against the demonic power pursuing him. Helping him is his servant, Boy, a child with no name and no past. The quick-witted orphan girl, Willow, is with them as they dig in death fields at midnight, and as they are swept into the sprawling blackness of a subterranean city on a journey from which there is no escape. Praise for The Book of Dead Days: “Beautifully paced and sometimes blood-soaked. . . . A very tangible sense of evil.”—The Guardian “Subtle menace and power.”—The Independent “Packed with drama, mystery, and intrigue.”—The Bookseller

Describes a Mexican family preparing for and celebrating the Day of the Dead.

By the critically acclaimed author of Tyger Tyger, a warm, magical story of a girl’s struggle to keep a promise to her dead mother. Glorieta Magdalena Davis Espinosa is happy that Papi married Alice. She’s happy that he can smile again after years of mourning Mamá. But the urn containing Mamá’s ashes disappeared into a drawer the day Alice moved in. If everything about Glorieta’s life is going to change, then she wants one thing to go her way: She wants to hear stories about her mamá when the family gathers on the last night of los Días de los Muertos. And that can only happen if Tia Diosonita will allow Mamá to be buried with the Espinosas in holy ground. If she will allow people to speak Mamá’s name. With the help of her best friend, River, and her cousin Mateo, Glorieta sets out to convince Diosonita that Mamá is not burning in Hell. To do so, she’ll have to learn to let hate go—and to love the people who stand in her way. In prose that sparkles with magical undertones, author Kersten Hamilton weaves a tender story about grief, faith, and the redemptive power of love.

Examines how Day of the Dead celebrations among America's Latino communities have changed throughout history, discussing how the traditional celebration has been influenced by mass media, consumer culture, and globalization.

Many cultures have celebrations that commemorate their ancestors. Mexico's celebration, los Días de Muertos, the Days of the Dead, can be like a carnival. Young people throng the streets dressed up in ghoulish costumes. They beg for calaveras - treats - like candy skulls made of sugar or chocolate, and everyone buys pan de muerto, a bread decorated with a patter of bones. This is also a time for families to reunite in remembrance of those who have died. People go to market to buy what is needed for the ofrenda, or offering, to the souls of the departed - special foods and other items. The next morning, everyone goes to the cemetery to visit the graves of loved ones who have died. All through the night, they pray and sing by candlelight in celebration of the Days of the Dead. Author Kathryn Lasky and photographer Christopher G. Knight capture the spirit of this vibrant holiday with vivid prose and brilliant, full-color photographs.

Day of the Dead or Día de Los Muertos is a vibrant fall holiday celebrated through the United States, Mexico and central America. In this award-winning activity book, readers explore an illustrated world illuminating the traditions and history of Day of the Dead through a series of mazes, puzzles and activities, using press out forms to create shrines and masks which can be decorated with the stickers included in the book, preparing readers young and old for this vibrant cultural celebration.

The Days of the Dead offers a remarkable journey within Mexico's traditional holiday honoring departed ancestors, friends, and family. Each aspect of the multiday festival is carefully explored, from the journey to the cemeteries to spruce up neglected gravesites to the lively marketplace selling breads and candies in the shapes of skulls and skeletons and finally, the peaceful vigil as friends and families crowd the cemeteries to await the arrival of their loved ones through the long night. San Francisco-based photographer John Greenleigh traveled to small towns in Mexico in four different years to document this extraordinary festival. Accompanied by evocative text by cultural scholar Rosalind Rosoff Beimler, the pictures speak eloquently to a ritual that is at once mocking and respectful of death -- and ultimately affirming of human life.

Benjamin January nd his wife, Rose, are en route to Mexico, where January's close friend is being held for a murder he says he did not commit. Can Benjamin clear him before he is executed?