Violence Reflected in Children’s Books

Abstract

The study aiming to determine elements related to violence in literary children's books was supported by document analysis. 15 books of 15 different authors were selected in order to obtain saturated data for the study. It was noted that when books were being selected, the books were printed by different publishing houses, updated and most importantly, contained content specific to "violence". After obtaining the books to be examined, they were first read without any records while the same data set was subjected to descriptive analysis with a focus on "violence". The results of the study suggest that characters exposed to violence in literary children's books are usually children and women and that the characters who tended to be tense were mostly men. In the study, it was found that child characters were exposed to violence by the people around them as well as their peers. On the other hand, it was observed that especially the characters representing the authority were depicted as the focus of violence in the work. The status-based relations and the desire to establish authority were the principal reasons for violence.