Preparing Books for Children from Birth through Age Six: A New Children's Reality Approach

Works of literature for children are supposed to give prominence to the child's self. In other words, the level of the works is expected to be appropriate to the characteristics of this demographic. In works of children's literature, the prominence of adults and their worlds along with their ideological, religious, and traditional statements, instead of those of children, indicate that books for children are formed not for children but for adults and their ideologies. This situation reveals an adult's will to shape the child. Merging perceptions, which are unfamiliar to the child's own and pertaining to the adult's world, into books for children may cause a child to take an early step towards adult life. The fact that children find ideologies, behaviors, actions, and senses pertaining to adults' lives, rather than their own, may cause children to feel alienated from their childhoods. Publishing books for children by reflecting perceptions unfamiliar to the children's worlds may cause "adult children" to appear in books for children. This article proposes that works of children's literature should reflect the children's reality. Thus, the child can be an active participant in the process of reading culture.