Grandparent-grandchild relationships in Turkish children’s novels

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to investigate what characteristics of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, which takes an important place in the establishment of strong family relations in the society life, are reflected in children’s novels. The novels having the concepts such as “dede (grandpa), nine (grannie)” for grandparents in their titles are included in the study. Document analysis technique was used in the study, while the data were analyzed by using the content analysis technique. The grandparents are the parents of the father in 6 of the 9 novels that were examined. In the novels, grandparent-grandchild relationship involves strong feelings such as love and pride while living in the same house or in different houses do not affect this relationship negatively. Grandmothers are more actively involved in cultural transmission while grandfathers are more actively involved in transferring value. Making the grandchildren establish relationship with the literary genres encourages them to read. If we assume that the children develop listening abilities by listening to literary genres and speaking abilities by telling the stories they listened to, then it can be said that grandparents contribute to the development of their grandchildren’s basic language abilities. © 2018 by authors, all rights reserved.