This message seems to be aimed more at children than adults. All of these adults are the direct cause of death for the child who happens to be on the page. Granted, the only adult we ever actually see is Death on the cover, but there are implications of adults on at least four of the pages. The emphasis of The Gashlycrumb Tinies is on the children, but that's not to say that there are no adults in the pages. The Gashlycrumb Tinies: is an alphabet book written by Edward Gorey that was first published in 1963 as the first of a collection of short stories called. The stark portrayal of the realities of death are a far cry from the sanitized death stories of the 1960s, and go directly against the bibliotherapy tradition, which is much softer and more about instructing a child how to feel about the vaguely-depicted death of a loved one (most often a pet). With his almost grotesque illustrations and his purposeful use of the picture book medium, Gorey was almost definitely playing against the trend of bibliotherapy, or explaining how to deal with death in books. The Gashlycrumb Tinies: or, After the Outing is an alphabet book written by Edward Gorey that was first published in 1963 as the first of a collection of short stories called The Vinegar Works, the eleventh work by Gorey. Similarly, all of the children in the book die from means that real children also have risk of dying from, which may prove to be a lesson for any child readers on basic safety. Gorey's illustrations emphasize the reality of death in a way that even children understand. Despite the suffering they are about to go through, the children's faces are more often than not blank or even serene before their death. Gorey's frank depictions of death are often snapshots of the seconds leading up to the deaths.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey