ABSTRACT
In Wolf Erlbruch’s Die Große Frage, Death responds to an unspoken “big question” with “You are here to love life”. Throughout history, a plethora of books have dictated to children expectations on how to frame and respond to life’s big questions. Given persistent romanticized concepts of childhood “innocence,” resulting in the protection of children from topics pertaining to sex, violence, and death, most children’s books, even today, fail to address the big questions concerning mortality, preferring instead to gloss over questions for which there are no simple absolute answers. As in Charlotte’s Web, many children’s picturebooks use friendship among animals of indeterminate age to introduce death-related themes. Also as in Charlotte’s Web, most stress companionship, sympathy, and empathy among differing species of animals, showing the legacy that each individual creature, each individual species, leaves for its community, and honoring that legacy through the mourners’ memories.
