En undersökning av hur djur antropomorfiseras i barnböcker

Animals has long been present as characters in children’s literature. The most common use of animals is by portraying them somewhat anthropomorphized - in other words by attributing them with human features. Therefore the following questions arise: how does animals become humanized, what features do they possess and and how different anthropomorphized species relate to one another? This study will focus on the presentation of animals in children’s literature. With the help of the following terms: anthropomorphism and person portrayal, we will analyse ten different children’s books with anthropomorphized animals to see what human features and characteristics they possess. For the purpose of our analysis we categorized the animals by their diet: carnivores, omnivores and herbivores. The result are: only communication capability had been given to all of the animals. The rest of the human features was clothes, tools and human walk that was distributed among the animals according to the books content and author. Finally we found a connection between the amount of cloths the animals were wearing and the level of anthropomorphism applied to them. In other words the more clothes the animals are given the more human features they possess