Animals in Books Used for Preschool Children

Abstract

AbstractChildren's literature has been considered a tool of socialization. It is likely that the way in which animal protagonists appear in books for young children could influence later attitudes. The aim of this study is to investigate books from preschools in high and low-income areas in South Africa, in order to analyze animal content and frequency of animal books chosen by the children. The method was to categorize the books (n=2259) according to format, genre and subject. The animal characters were divided into the categories realistic, humanized, anthropomorphic and fantasy.The results show that the most commonly encountered format was that of picture books (77.3%). The genre most frequently encountered was realistic fiction (43.2%) and non-fiction information (30.0%). In 44.5% of books animal characters were central to the plot. The most popular books were realistic fiction where anthropomorphistic or fantasy animals were the main protagonists. Preschool children from low-income areas where illite...