Riley Rabbit Learns About Death

Project Overview

Riley Rabbit Learns About Death by Ashley Hall (Mascot Books, June 2022) is one of those rare children’s books that doesn’t flinch from a hard subject while still managing to feel genuinely comforting. When Riley loses a loved one, his mother walks him through what to expect — the funeral, the cemetery, the strange mix of sadness, confusion, and even anger that comes with grief. Hall’s writing validates every feeling without rushing past any of them, giving children the language and the permission to feel what they feel.

The illustration challenge was making anthropomorphic rabbit characters carry the full emotional weight of bereavement — grief is a deeply human experience, and the art needed to make young readers feel seen in Riley’s face and body, even through the gentle remove of animal characters.

Role

The challenge here was emotional authenticity through an anthropomorphic lens. Grief is intensely human — the confusion, the body’s strange refusals, the mix of sadness and anger, the first cautious steps toward acceptance — and the art had to carry all of that through rabbit characters without losing the warmth that a picture book for young children requires. Riley needed to be expressive enough to hold the full emotional arc: from loss, through the wake and cemetery, to the moment the story turns quietly toward what remains.

Full illustration across all 38 pages included developing Riley, his mother, and the wider family cast, building out the domestic and ceremonial environments the story moves through, and preparing print-ready files for Mascot Kids.

Character Design

Before a single page is illustrated, I develop the main characters in full — defining their proportions, expressions, and personality. This is the foundation that keeps your characters recognizable and consistent across every scene, every lighting condition, and every emotional moment in the project.

Process

Every project follows this same structured path, so you always know where we are and what comes next. You review and approve at the sketch stage and the line art stage — nothing moves to color until you’re happy. By the time the final spread is rendered, there are no surprises.