Anne and the Sand Dobbies: A Story about Death for Children and Their Parents

Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews It is always difficult to describe and evaluate fiction that is manufactured to surround information and/or to instill a given attitude. Most fail to meet any literary standard applied. And yet, many of these books find defenders and a market because a certain amount of information filters through the fictional baffle screen. Anne and the Sand Dobbies is a case in point. It is intended as a book about death to be used by both parents and children. The author is Dean of Cambridge Theological Seminary. He immediately loses the storyteller's greatest audience advantage by giving away the story climax at the start; the reader is told that baby Anne and the dog Bonnie die. In choosing to tell the story in the words of an 11-year-old boy, other advantages are lost; vocabulary, insight and overview must all be kept within the limited range of Danny. His 2-year-old sister Anne, to whom he is devoted, dies of overnight pneumonia. The Episcopal funeral service, suggested parental attitudes (by example) towards death, grief and cremation are the facts Danny's story are meant to introduce. An awkward sub-plot is used to underline all this. It involves the death of the family dog. This leads to a re-enactment of the funeral service by Danny and his siblings which he reports in a self-consciously cute manner. The sand dobbies of the title are fantasy creatures. Their presence in the story is an element of further confusion. Readers of very formal or fundamental persuasions will find this treatment of the questions raised by the facts of death too casual.