| This study examines the text and pictures of the Caldecott Medal books for character traits as perceived by adults and children. Two adult females read and evaluated the 62 books for instances of eight positive character traits---compassion, respect, discipline, loyalty, courage, responsibility, forgiveness, and justice---and their negative counterparts. Five children (age 8--11) also read and evaluated five Caldecott books.;The data collected included running records, and tape recordings of interviews and a group discussion; it was analyzed by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Significant statistical differences (p < .05) were found for all the research questions, which examined relationships between character traits and the following: age, gender and ethnicity of characters; decade of award-granting; visual-based and text-based perceptions; and adult and child perceptions. The perceptions of the adult readers indicate that respect and lack of respect are the leading positive and negative character traits in terms of frequency. Positive traits outnumber negative traits by four to one, based on frequency counts. The Caldecotts of the 1990s have the highest frequency of negative traits of all the decades. Although overall the Caldecotts exhibit marked gender imbalance in frequency of character trait instances, it is not universal across age categories. Percentages of occurrence for each character trait show striking gender similarity.;The data from this study indicates that, in contrast to the adult readers, the children are more visually-based than text-based in their perceptions of character traits in picture books. In their running records the child participants often perceived character trait instances which were bypassed by the adults. These unique perceptions were categorized under the themes of attention to animals, courage, adult-child relationships, and "proper" behavior.;Character trait analysis of picture books is a flexible framework to assist children to discern and discuss perceived messages in texts and illustrations; it may also help adults to better understand how children construct meaning in books. The process can serve to intersect character education and children's literature while respecting children's perceptions. |
