Multiculturalism in Picture Books

Author:

Prentice, Jillissa

Area of Honors:

Elementary and Kindergarten Education

Degree:

Bachelor of Science

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Carla Rae Chamberlin-Quinlisk, Thesis Supervisor
Ronald Lee Zigler, Thesis Honors Advisor
Carla Rae Chamberlin-Quinlisk, Faculty Reader

Keywords:

Multiculturalism
picture books
children's literature

Abstract:

ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to examine multiculturalism in picture books for young children. I first discuss the importance of multiculturalism and how it teaches values as well as expands the knowledge of various cultures. I continue the discussion by explaining multiculturalism’s effect on children’s personal identities. Next, I conducted a content analysis on 127 picture books from the summer reading lists of two school districts: The School District of Philadelphia, an urban school district, and Lower Merion, a suburban district. My research questions focus on how diverse cultures were represented in the summer reading lists of both districts. The representations of diverse cultures in the summer reading lists of both school districts were also compared. The results of the content analysis made it evident that both school districts lack cultural diversity. White main and incidental characters were the most frequent ethnic group for both districts. Therefore in contrast, the most common characters reflected the school populations for Lower Merion, but not for The School District of Philadelphia. In fact, there were very few picture books that included minorities in both school districts especially when it came to Hispanic and Asian American cultures.