Putting Makeup on Dead People

May 16, 2011
Since Donna's father died, she prefers to go inside herself to a "quiet place.... the only spot I feel at home," until she finds another comfortable placeâa funeral homeâand decides to become a mortician. But even as Donna applies to mortuary school after high school and starts work at Brighton Brothers Funeral Home, she must learn to connect with the living, including her well-meaning but disapproving mother and an offbeat friend who may be crushing on her. Readers will find Donna's job choice intriguing, as well as the descriptions of her education, including restorative arts class, where "people in lab coats are working with what I think is clay, shaping it into things I have to squint to realize are parts of the human face." Violi's first novel is swimming in unusual characters, from the peopleâboth living and deadâwho pass through the funeral home, to the eccentric members of Donna's church drama troupe. These characters and their many plot lines distract from Donna's journey to embrace both those around her and those who have died. Ages 14âup.

June 1, 2011

Here's a teen novel with a unique premise: High-school senior Donna decides she wants to become a mortician.

Donna has experience with death. Her beloved father died of cancer when she was 14, and she's had some trouble relating to others since that event. When a classmate dies in an accident, Donna attends the viewing in the same funeral home that her family had used for her father, and she becomes fascinated by the procedures there. How do they get the makeup so right? She finds that the corpses do not frighten her. The mortuary feels like home. Against her mother's strongly expressed wishes, she decides to go to mortician's school instead of the Catholic college that has already accepted her. As she rebels against her mother, she meets a boy who seems interested in her and starts a relationship based mostly on sexual attraction, leaving her secret crush on another boy unfulfilled. Meanwhile she moves in to the "student's room" at the mortuary, confidently awaiting her embalming class. Although some wry comedy seeps into the narrative, Donna's focus, and the book's, remains on respecting the dead people and easing the grief of their families. As Donna learns how to care for dead people she also begins to care for living ones.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2011
Grades 8-12 The title may draw fans of the undead, but Donna, the main character in this quiet novel, is much more interested in the actual dead. Against her mother's wishes, Donna enrolls in a mortuary-science program and takes an internship at the funeral home that cared for her father four years ago, helping to make people's final event a dignified one. There is nothing sensational or eerie here; Donna truly finds the skill and art fascinating and feels truly alive for the first time since her father's death. Donna's interspersed notes on funerals point out the commonalities in death: someone always says something inappropriate; someone is always left behind. She is also navigating the physical and emotional boundaries of dating for the first time, gaining confidence through a new friendship with dynamic freethinker Liz, and reaching out to a Wiccan aunt who had been exiled from her strongly Catholic family. Rich with characters whose complexity is often only hinted at, this first novel will appeal to fans of Sarah Ockler's 20 Boy Summer (2009) or L. K. Madigan's Flash Burnout (2009).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2012
Donna has lived a lonely, vacant life since her dad died four years ago. After attending a classmate's funeral, she makes a revelatory decision to forego plans for college and become a mortician. As Donna comes to terms with death--and finds peace therein--personal and familial relationships blossom. Violi successfully turns a bizarre premise into a highly affecting, well-crafted story.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)