Spot Died Last Week: Children's Picture Books About the Death of a Pet.

In this paper, I analyze 35 children's picture books that focus on the death of a child's pet to determine how they portray the relationship between a child and a pet, what they describe as memorable about a pet, whether the book encourages any compassion for the dying animal, and how the animal's death is described. I found that the majority of these books treat the death as less worthy of grief and less fear-producing that human death and therefore a good way for the child to learn about death and the life cycle. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]