Temsil edilmeyenin temsili: Resimli çocuk kitaplarında engellilik

This study examines the representation of disability in pre-school children's fiction picture books. It aims to investigate and identify the characteristics of how disability is represented in order to raise awareness about the issues surrounding the depiction of disability and in this way, help to make picture books more inclusive. Additionally, the goal of the study is to inspire and motivate illustrators to change current misrepresentation or non-representation of disability and diversity in picture books. The focus of this thesis is on the children's picture books published in Turkey in the last decade, which belong to local and foreign authors. This thesis uses qualitative analysis as a method. It examines a total of 52 picture books in detail via 40 different codes. The results show that there is an increase and improvement in the representation of disability in picture books published in the last decade. However, the analyzed picture books usually use disability as a theme, they have stereotypical approach to the types of disabilities and aim to present information about the type of disability rather than a story. Furthermore, the disabled characters are mostly main characters and they are generally children. This study emphasizes that picture books need to be more inclusive and equitable as they are influential educational instruments for children.