Touches of humour lighten an otherwise serious discussion, which can be quite a relief. The six-year-old narrator's mother has always warned him of The Terrible Things That Can Happen to Careless Children. He has difficulty understanding the death, through illness, of a schoolmate. He is angry because the boy did not do anything wrong to deserve such a fate. The narrator's mother explains that only very occasionally there are illnesses which doctors cannot fix. The book ends with the narrator's mother promising to talk to the teacher, as the teacher did not explain the schoolmate's death very well. This only emphasises the difficulty adults have in explaining death to children.