Abstract
Themes such as death and mourning are often dealt with in contemporary illustrated books, but they remain difficult subjects for young children. In Petit Lapin Hopla, Elzbieta offers children a double view of death, at their level and without ever exceeding the limits of the adult's own knowledge.
Through a thoughtful reinterpretation of the famous English nursery rhyme Cock Robin, by means of a theatral and ritualised discourse that subtly plays on the implicit, she gives the young reader a sense of the possibility of a child's death, and even of his own. The meaning of the funeral rituals that unite the community of the living in the accompaniment of the dead is also revealed to the child with accuracy and subtlety: the means offered to each person to take part in the farewell ceremony, the respect due to the body, the humanisation of the places where the body rests and where recollection will be possible, the intimate and painful process of mourning that is shared by all those who loved the absent person, and the fragile presence of the latter in the memories of those who remain.