Determining the number of words required to understand the bestselling middle school children's literature novels of 2022

It is well established that works of children's literature make direct and significant contributions to children's cognitive, affective, social, and linguistic development. While such works support the development of linguistic skills, they also require readers to possess an adequate level of vocabulary knowledge in order to comprehend texts accurately. For children to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words encountered in texts, it is essential that they already know the vast majority of the words used in the books. The purpose of this study is to identify the vocabulary found in children's literature novels written for middle school readers; to determine how many of the most frequent words listed in Turkish frequency dictionaries must be known in order to understand these works; and to reveal quantitative differences in vocabulary use among the examined books. The population of this study consists of middle school children's literature novels published in Türkiye in 2022. The sample comprises ten bestselling novels selected from this group: Abartma Tozu (Şermin Yaşar), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl), Dedemin Bakkalı (Şermin Yaşar), Getting Lost on the Map (Vladimir Tumanov), The Tiger and the Acrobat (Susanna Tamaro), Jayden's Rescue (Vladimir Tumanov), The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry), The Story Of A Seagull And The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly (Luis Sepúlveda), Matilda (Roald Dahl), and The Flying Classroom (Erich Kästner). Since this study aims to present a descriptive evaluation of the number of words required to comprehend these novels, the content analysis method was employed. Frequency lists of the words appearing in the books were compiled; these lists were then compared with the words found in Yazılı Türkçenin Kelime Sıklığı Sözlüğü (Göz, 2003) and the Türkçe Sıklık Sözlüğü: Öğrenenler İçin Temel Sözcük Bilgisi (Aksan, Aksan, Mersinli & Demirhan, 2017), and coverage rates were calculated. The study identified a total of 159,614 words across all examined books. It was found that a child who knows all the words in Göz's frequency dictionary can comprehend 94.4% of the words used in the novels, while a child who knows all the words in Aksan et al.'s dictionary can understand 81.8% of the texts. To comprehend the bestselling middle school children's literature novels of 2022, it is necessary to know the first 8,000+ words in Göz's dictionary and the first 5,000+ words in Aksan et al.'s dictionary. Based on the findings, several recommendations were proposed.