Curiosity as Portrayed in Young Children's Literature

Abstract

210 young children's picture-story books were read to examine how curiosity was portrayed. 116 instances of obvious curiosity were obtained. Each instance of curiosity was assessed in terms of how it was portrayed: neutral (being curious was simply descriptive), positive (being curious was clearly desirable), or negative (being curious was clearly undesirable). Analysis showed 76.7% of the instances portrayed curiosity as neutral, 9.5% were positive, and 13.8% were negative. When the books were divided into older (1969 or older publication) and more recent (1970 and later), there was a clear shift toward recent books portraying curiosity in a negative light.