Brown Bear & Oofie Present: The Loss of a Loved One

Death is inevitable. No one likes to talk about it because it is such a depressing and emotional topic. Brown Bear & Oofie are best friends and have life learning experiences together. In "The Loss of a Loved One", Brown Bear's Grandma (Mimi), has died. Oofie helps Brown Bear with emotional support and they discuss the topic of death together. This book will help parents and kids ease into this very difficult fact of life. The detailed facial expressions of the two characters will help children connect with their own emotions and grief that they are experiencing from their personal loss of a loved one.
This book is not geared towards any one particular religion. Instead, it provides comfort and inspires the reader to keep an open mind about the possibilities of what happens to us once we depart.

Social issues are hard. Especially for young kids. I was trying to communicate with my girls one day, and was left frustrated and unable to get my message across to them in a way that really helped them out with their problem. I sat down and started drawing simple drawings and then told a short story to go along with it. The girls were able to connect with me and I saw my "words of wisdom" sink in to their brains. The girls have their favorite stuffed animal from when they were babies and I was inspired to create characters and give them a voice. Brown Bear & Oofie are meant to look as if a child of a similar age of the reader, drew them. I believe the young readers can connect more this way. From my observations, before deciding on how to illustrate my books, I saw my own girls and other kids their age gravitate towards artwork that appeared to have been drawn by children. The simplicity of it all was not only appealing but just made sense. It immediately opened the door for more communication and random conversation with my girls. Random or not, it was a conversation and it worked. So after seeing this done repeatedly, I decided on my simplistic kid like drawings. I was simultaneously inspired by how kids can play for hours and hours with one background and reusable stickers, or paper dolls, or an app on their device that is basically a virtual paper doll set. That is why the background never changes in my books. I wanted to focus on the message and the details of the character's expressions and emotions.