Urban Life Represented in Children's Picture Books

그림책 속에 나타난 도시

This research explored contemporary cities and children's lives in picture books by a survey of 71 picture books published and translated into Korean from 1996 to 2006. These books represented city or urban life as their settings with children or personified animals as their main characters. They were classified by four categories. Results were the city space that most frequently appeared in the picture books were streets (73%) including downtown (38%) and back streets (6%). Emotions displayed by children in the city were mainly negative feelings (60%) including fear, worry, sadness, and boredom. The most important issue was alienation (28.5%). Main characters barely managed to cope with life in the city (76%).