Sunday, October 12, 2014

Children's Picture Book Analysis: My First Highlights Magazine

For my children's book analysis I chose from an array of My First Highlights Hello Magazines. Highlights has been around since 1946, Highlights Hello are aimed towards toddlers, specifically for ages 0-2. Highlights Hello began in 2012. I nanny for a 2 year old boy, Travis, who has over 100+ books on his shelf, but he loves these magazines the most. Each one consists of 2-3 short stories. Travis' parents are both teachers at Antelope; his mother a history teacher and his father an English teacher. Together, they find Highlights Hello to be appropriately diverse for their 2 year old son.    

 


The first story inserted in this magazine is called Stroller Time. Since these stories are meant for preschoolers, I focused more on the illustrations rather than the words. On the first page alone, I see three different skin complexions. I felt like this was a relevant point to bring up because this is what a preschooler will typically see on a walk through the park. 
"Sitting in my stroller, my daddy pushes me..."
I feel like this goes against the stereotypical gender role since a father is out pushing a stroller through the park. The assumption can be made that this could be a stay at home dad, which we don't see as often as a stay at home mother.

A few things stood out while looking at the images for this poem titled Itsy-Bitsy Baby: 
1. The baby in pink clothes in both images. Its hard to tell if they wanted us to know that the baby was a girl or not, but this is a stereotype that girls wear pink. 
2. In regards to #1, the mother is dressed in green and blue. 
3. Even with their darker complexion, we can't be sure of what their ethnicity is but the illustrator did give both mom and baby really curly hair. 

 The last story in this Highlights Magazine was The Little Gardener. Initially what I liked about this story was that they had a little boy out in the garden with whom we can assume is mom, which goes against the gender stereotype that girls are the gardeners. 

But then as I looked further into it, I noticed the lighter complexion and the ways their eyes were drawn.. It looked like they were trying to represent the characters as Asian. I noticed the hat they have on the little boy to me looks somewhat like a rice farmer hat.

Of course I can be looking way too far into this, but I was hesitant whether that was culturally appropriate or not.