Illustration
Saving Super Hadi
- Year
- 2026
- Category
- Illustration
- Medium
- Picture book — 18 pages, digital illustration, 684 × 684 mm
Overview
A picture book that gives children the words for safe and unsafe touch
Saving Super Hadi
A picture book that gives children the words for safe and unsafe touch
Illustration and design by Kainat Waseem with Ushna Azeem · 2026Hadi has a monster who follows him to school. The monster is what an unsafe grown-up feels like to a small child — a at the end of a corridor, a reason not to play, a secret he was told to keep. Across eighteen spreads Hadi finds a voice, tells his parents, and the loses its power. Every page carries a quiet note for the adult reading aloud, so the hardest conversation in childhood can be had gently, in rhyme, in full colour.
- The brief
- Teach four-to-eight-year-olds the difference between good and bad touch without frightening them, and without asking a child to understand adult language.
- The idea
- Draw the danger as a faceless monster-. It is recognisable to a child, it never depicts harm, and it shrinks the moment Hadi speaks — the lesson is carried by the picture, not a warning.
- For the grown-up
- A footnote sits on every spread: what standing up means, why nobody may keep a secret for you, that it is fine to yell, that anyone can be unsafe however close they are.
I am very strong. I can stand up for myself when something goes wrong.
01 / 17I wasn't always this way — I was scared to speak up, make friends, even play.
02 / 17There was this big scary monster, always around me.
03 / 17I did not want to go to school. My parents would ask why I was losing my cool.
04 / 17I could not work alone in my classroom — the monster would be my .
05 / 17I wouldn't even go from class to buy my favourite fries.
06 / 17The school's garden was big and full of flowers, but not during the monster's hours.
07 / 17I did not know it was okay to tell when something went wrong.
08 / 17My dad held my hand and told me that through every trouble he would stand.
09 / 17One day I let it all out, and felt my world change.
10 / 17He fought the monster who had been so cruel.
11 / 17There are days when it's hard to be brave — then I think of the lesson they gave.
12 / 17They taught me that instead of hiding, I should yell and tell.
13 / 17My parents I learned to trust — I never leave a secret in my heart to rust.
14 / 17My mom and dad are my power. With them beside me, every monster I can tower.
15 / 17They are truly my superheroes, and now so am I, from my head to my toes.
16 / 17A closing note for the grown-up reading along.
17 / 17
Picture book — 18 pages, digital illustration, 684 × 684 mm