Values in Emin Özdemir's children's books

Children's books are among the products that have an effective role in providing literary pleasure and aesthetic sensitivity to children who make up the target audience. Children's books are of great importance in the development of children's emotions and thoughts, cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor skills, language sensitivity, and vocabulary. Emin Özdemir is one of the pioneering writers of Turkish children's literature with his attention to form, content, language, education, pedagogy, etc. in his works. Emin Özdemir, who published a total of 11 children's books during his lifetime, is concerned with giving children both a sense of their mother tongue and a sense of national and cultural values. In this study, the children's books of Emin Özdemir, who has many studies on Turkish language and literature, are analyzed. The suitability of the analyzed works to the criteria of children's literature (cover, drawing, binding, subject, character, value education, message, etc.) was evaluated. In this way, it has been tried to reveal the quality and suitability of the works of Emin Özdemir, whose writing in children's literature has been neglected until today. In this study based on document analysis, it was determined that Emin Özdemir's children's books are among the useful and recommendable publications in Turkish lessons in terms of both external structure (form-content) and mother tongue and value education. Keywords: Children's literature, mother tongue, values education, educational messages, Emin Özdemir.