Montville Teacher Pens New Children's Book About Life After Death

It's a story of friendship, loss, and renewal, a way to explain the concept of death to those who find it hardest to understand: children.

Len Saunders, a veteran P.E. teacher who has taught at Montville's Valley View Elementary School for 32 years, wanted to find a way to explain loss to a child. It's the kind of story he wished he had when he was a child grappling with the same abstruse concepts.

But when he put that concept into words four years ago, he wasn't satisfied--not with the words nor the art. So he scrapped it, rewrote it, found an illustrator who could put his vision into pictures, and is now finally publishing what is his fifth book called, Buddy and Bea.

The story follows the friendship of Buddy, a leaf, and Bea, a bird. They live alongside one another and enjoy each other's company but soon, their world changes. The leaf's color transforms, from green to red to brown, and then one day, Buddy falls to the ground underneath. The sadness the bird experiences with the loss of the leaf is later tempered as the season changes, when in spring the bird nests and leaf buds begin to grow all around.

"It's the story of my life. My dad passed away about 8 months before I was born so one day, when I was about 8 years of age, I was very confused when a friend asked me what happened to my dad," Saunders explained. "It hit me: Oh yeah, I had a dad. My mom really protected me from that, but you don't understand what death is."

Saunders hopes his book will help other children who may have unanswered questions about life and loss. In the meantime, he knows the book, with part of the proceeds going toward The Boys and Girls Club in northwest New Jersey, will help some kids in and around his community.

Buddy and Bea is published by Snow Leopard Publishing and is now available on Amazon.com. Saunders next book, about fitness, will be released in September by Headline Books.

Photo via Danny Rotondo, with permission.

Image via Alyssa Josue, with permission.