As someone who has been more or less fixated on death since I was a child, I am a fan of children’s books about death, and as a parent, have mourned the fact that there is a dearth of them—or at least a dearth of ones I really like.

When I first saw Death Is Stupid by Anastasia Higginbotham at a party, I was taken with its perfect title and the way that title worked with the brightly-colored, collage-style cover. I took a picture of it so I could go and buy it later, which is how I found out that the book is one in a series called Ordinary Terrible Things, published by The Feminist Press. 

I bought all three books thus far released in the series: Divorce Is The Worst, Death Is Stupid, and Tell Me About Sex, Grandma, and as I read them, I admired how Higginbotham neatly smashed common expectations about what children’s books do, particularly those that deal with difficult subjects. 

Parents are located largely offstage in these books—I am reminded of the way that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz rendered the adult voices in his classic children’s films unintelligible—and children are depicted making their way through painful situations in ways that seemed to me startlingly real as well as radically generous to children. I sought out Higginbotham and spoke to her in her Brooklyn studio about her work and how it came to be. 

—Amy Fusselman

THE BELIEVER: Tell me about the genesis of your children’s book series, Ordinary Terrible Things. I love how the title of the series undercuts a lot of what often happens in the children’s book genre, where terrible things are presented as unusual or extraordinary. How did you come to devoting yourself creatively to this perspective?

ANASTASIA HIGGINBOTHAM: Recently I read a quote attributed to Edith Wharton that said: “Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn’t any.” I love that so much. That is the whole point of this series. All of the serious problems I’ve faced as an adult—self-hating behaviors, debilitating sadness about injustice, f’d up romantic relationships, sexual harassment at work (by women and men), my violent temper, etc.—traces directly back to the unaddressed, ordinary, terrible things that happened when I was a kid.

Events like divorce, death, or an incident of sexual abuse, for example, could be approached as difficult and painful times in a child’s life. But they often get ignored instead, made light of, or flat-out denied by grown-ups who see children’s lives as simple and see children’s pain as less than real. But something that started out as trouble, over time, becomes trauma. I believe...