An ecocritical review on environment themed children's books

In this day and age, the ecological problems caused by humankind's behaviour towards the environment, who deems oneself as master of the nature rather than being a part of it, is one the most important problems out there, awaiting its solution. Along with various actions, literature, which is an essential part of human life and its cultural existence, is addressing these problems through ecocriticism. It has become likely to come across ecological problems being mentioned in children's literature, as well as in world-renowned literary works. In that regard, especially for secondary schoolers, the field of children's literature has become an option for developing positive attitude and behaviour towards the nature. Some expressions within the children's literature texts have been determined as potentially causing a negative attitude among children; and even misleading them towards an ecophobic path. It is regarded necessary to detect those expressions. In this research, the goal is to analyze nature-themed children's books from an ecocritical context. In this research, content analysis method is used as the the scientific method of research. The research's extent is comprised of predetermined twenty books. Twenty different books from Turkish authors who published in the field of children's literature have been selected, and analyzed in accordence with the designated ecocritical context. Climate change, environmental pollution, natural disasters, flora and its deterioration, animal fauna and its deterioration, water pollution, air pollution, pandemic, ecophobic factors, population and anthropogenic movements have been determined as standards; and the sentences involving those terms have been singled out. Accordingly, the most common environmental problem in environment-themed children's books was plant flora and degradation, followed by animal fauna and degradation, population and anthropogenic elements and ecophobic elements. In conclusion, ecocritical factors were seen in all the books analyzed. Furthermore, expressions within the books which may lead to ecophobia have been identified.