Examination of children's games which was illustrated in children's books from a developmental perspective

This study was carried out with the aim of analyzing the children's play included in the 100 best selling children's books on the internet from a developmental point of view. The play theories of Piaget, Parten and Smilansky were taken as the basis while examining the books from a developmental point of view. The universe of the research is composed of all illustrated children's books on book sites selling online. The 100 best-selling children's books with pictures, selected through purposeful sampling, constitute the sample of the study. In the research, the data were collected with the "book review form" created by searching the literature. The form consists of two parts: general information, children's literature, and play. In general information, the title of the book, its author, illustrator, publisher, year of publication, number of pages, number of pages; In the children's literature and play section, it consists of sub-titles such as characters playing the play, accompanying the play, play environment, play material, the field supported by the play, and theories. In the study, certain categories and sub-codes were created by using the content analysis method, one of the qualitative research methods. Support was received from the MAXQDA program for data analysis. As a result, it was determined that 56 of the 100 best-selling children's books with picture have children's play, and these play mostly support the cognitive development area. In the children's play in the books, the most frequent exercise / functional play phase from Piaget's play theory, the most common single play phase from Parten's play theory, and the most common functional play phase in Smilansky's play theory were seen. The findings were discussed in the context of children's literature and children's play.