A study of animal characters as representations of humans: the animality/bibliotherapy test

Abstract

Anthropomorphic animal characters have a symbolic role in stories, toys, and in children’s literature. These non-human animals may serve as a symbolic role model for a child. When books confront issues that are relevant to a child’s life situation and may be worthy of discussion between a child and an adult, the concept of bibliotherapy deserves consideration. Bibliotherapy is defined as the healing potential of stories. An animal character in a story may serve as a “silent fellow traveler” for a child who is dealing with an urgent developmental or disturbing task. This study considers a theory of bibliotherapy as an approach for studying a picture book. An analysis method was created to study the content and animal characters. The method and theory are based on bibliotherapy and its benefits as a tool for evaluating the possibilities of picture books.

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