Exploring the concept of death in a selection of translated works of children's literature: A case study of six illustrated storybooks

the present study examined the concept of death in Western child literature translated in Iran The stories studied in this study were selected from six illustrated story books suitable for age groups B and C (elementary school children). The books were selected in consultation with experts in children's literature. Besides, a qualitative content analysis method was used to examine the texts of the stories and identify the images and themes in the stories using reflective analysis. The concept of death in the selected stories is divided into three categories: The Biological category, which includes the physiological concept of the issue of death and includes sub-categories such as irreversibility, causes of death, and so on. The emotional category includes sub-categories such as the unpleasantness of death, fear of death, etc., and the metaphysical category, which includes sub-categories such as agony, belief in the world after death, etc. Then the alignment or non-alignment of the categories with the Holy Quran was examined by reference to the verses and with the help of the interpretive analysis method. The results showed that most of the stories have addressed the concept of death in the biological and emotional categories of death and they have paid less attention to the metaphysical aspects of this concept. The metaphysical category refers to the concept of death and has the least alignment