A study on Toprak Işık, an author in children's literature

Children's literature, which dates back a long time, appeared in Turkish Literature through the end of 19th century. There were a lot of debates about whether it should exist in our literature, however, it finally started to receive its worth. After the concepts of "child", the place of children in society and children's rights were accepted as values in the world, literature for children eventually came out. Authors of today's world have written numerous works by combining education with pleasure to develop children in every aspect. Toprak Işık, whose real name is Erdal Kılıçaslan, was born in Elazığ in 1973. He was a very successful student during school years, and the passion of reading in his childhood led him to write books. At first, he wrote for adults, but afterwards he wrote in children's literature. Toprak Işık, who has both literary works and academic articles, has written 24 books for children, 6 books for adults, and 4 theatrical productions. He inherited reading habit from his father who was a teacher, and he contributed into children's literature by writing several books. In his works, he mainly writes about human relationships, social life, and naturalism because he aims to give children universal messages. He specially delas with justice and equality in his works. By creating his characters from different groups in the society, he has tried to tell children how important to be fair and respectful to labour. Toprak Isık is an engineer. He uses the advantages of his knowledge in his works to help children develop in maths and science, he creates his works to make children love maths and science. Since the author has known that children generally are afraid of maths and science, he edited the basic information fictionally according to the learning outcomes of the Ministry of Education and those works are mainly of fantastic fiction. Children faces several scientific information while they are wandering in the fiction. Toprak Isık combined literature with maths and science in his works to educate children and enhance their imaginary world. The author uses the language in an informal way. He studied how children communicates with each other, and what words and sentences they use so that he could use them in his works. These utterances are generally the humorous parts in his works. The author's works in reference type are about how children should plan their future. In the series of "Acaba Ne Olsam?" (What If I Was) he helps children in choice of profession and in "İşlem Tamam" (Operation OK) he shows children that maths is not something to be afraid of in a friendly way. In this research, the author's 11 works in children's literature have been analysed. It has been shown that they are consistent with children's literature by the samples taken from the works. Keywords: Toprak Işık, children, children's literature, child education, universal messages, science.