Ecocriticism in children's literature

Mankind has interacted with nature since its existence in the world. Human's relationship with nature has gained a different dimension as a result of putting himself in the center of nature. Ecocriticism, which is the subject of our research, aims to bring nature-centered environmental understanding to people through literature by opposing the human-centered environmental understanding. In this study, 20 children's books by 20 different authors were examined in the context of ecocriticism theory and it was tried to determine how ecocriticism took place in children's books. For this purpose, the literature on ecocriticism and children's literature was scanned and the books were examined and evaluated under the titles of external structure and internal (content) structure. The data of the research, which was carried out by adopting the qualitative research approach, were obtained through document analysis. Research data were analyzed first with descriptive analysis then with content analysis. The data set of the study consists of 20 children's books published after 2010. When we look at the results of the research, it is emphasized that the works examined prioritize recognizing nature and raising environmental awareness, and that man is a whole with nature and that man is again affected by every destruction he creates in nature. In this context, it has been seen that the works bear traces of ecopsychology, ecofeminism and social ecology.