In this thesis, a picture book for children on the topic of death and dying was designed. It was studied how the death of a loved one affects the child and how the child deals with it. This difficult topic was presented through a simple story about a fictional mouse family experiencing the loss of a loved one. By presenting fictional characters and their story of loss, children can identify and empathize with the characters while discovering the complexity of the concept of death. The goal was to encourage the children to ask questions, triggering debate and a search for answers in line with the family's beliefs and values. By choosing appropriate colors to represent the characters and their surroundings, we portrayed emotions and helped the child understand their complexity. After reviewing the literature and research on death, dying, and grief in childhood, we introduced different approaches and techniques for depicting a story with a complex emotional concept. We also presented different illustration techniques and the basics of graphic design used in the creation of this picture book. Due to the age group of children between three and six years old, who usually cannot read and write yet, we decided not to write the text in capital letters, as it will be read primarily by adults. We have chosen a typeface from the family Garamond old style typefaces, which differs in the boldness of the strokes and has serifs to improve the legibility of the longer text in printed form. The next part presents the process of writing a story, focusing on how children cope with loss, the preparation and process of illustrating the characters, their surroundings, and the design of the final picture book. Both the story and the illustrations of the picture book, which were graphically prepared for printing as a final product in the last part of the thesis, are the author’s work. The result of the work was a finished picture book on the subject of dying and death for children in the age group between three and six years.
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