In Each Little Bird That Sings, Comfort Snowberger's Great-great-Aunt Florentine dies in her garden, and her Great-Uncle Edisto dies the day they had planned a picnic. Comfort is very worried about her next funeral, which will be her 248th, and whose it will be. She is also annoyed with the burden of having to care for her cousin, Peach, after the funeral. After a while, this is when Comfort realizes that her true friend had been there all along with Peach. All Comfort wants to do now is hide in her closet with Dismay. However, Comfort, Peach and Dismay are caught in a flash flood at the cemetery, and struggle to stay above water on an oak tree. Comfort tells Peach to let Dismay go, but Peach does not hear her, submerged underwater. Comfort pries Peach's fingers off of Dismay's collar, leaving the dog to float down the stream alone. Dismay's collar is found by Declaration close to a drainage ditch near Lake Tallyhoma. Knowing he is dead, Snapfinger holds a memorial service for Dismay, but Declaration and Comfort remain upset with each other.
The E. B. White Read Aloud Award was established in 2004 by The Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC) to honor books that its membership felt embodied the universal read aloud standards that were created by the work of the author E. B. White. In 2006 the award was expanded into two categories:
Titles are nominated for the award by ABC booksellers, and then the final decision is made by a committee of booksellers that meets annually in February. The awards are publicly announced, and the official presentation takes place, during a children's dinner at BookExpo America. They are announced in conjunction with Indies Choice Book Awards. The award was last given in 2019, the final year that BookExpo was held. Because the award nominees are generated by independent booksellers based on books they have loved in their own stores, there is no formal outside submission process.
About the National Book Award:
The National Book Award for Young People's Literature is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation (NBF) to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The judging panel are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".