Good Children in Contemporary Islamic Indonesian Children’s Books: A Question of Inclusivity

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-360-3_67How to use a DOI?

Keywords

childhood; children’s book; good children; discourse analysis; Islam; Indonesia

Abstract

This paper examines the constructions of the good Muslim children in Indonesian contemporary children literature. Following Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology, it approached the series of Rahmatan lil Aalamin by discussing the following questions: (1) how does the series portray the good children; and, (2) what modes of representation does the series use to portray the good children. Having unpacked the series’ visual and linguistic representation of children, it found four constructions of children. They are, namely, children as the proud bearers of differences, children as the role-models of service/sacrifice, young persons of high self-regulation, and children as nurturers of solidarity and shapers of good-behaviours. In addition, three dominant modes of representation were identified, namely, good girls over boys, good Muslim versus trouble others, and social over ritual piety. While the series aims at promoting peaceful, inclusive Islam, its images of children perpetuate instead a less inclusive view of social life. This paper recommends for preschool teachers to critically approach any literary works targeting young children. In this way, they can promote inclusive social life, in addition to their mandate of school preparation.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ali Formen
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/04/02
TI  - Good Children in Contemporary Islamic Indonesian Children’s Books: A Question of Inclusivity
BT  - Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Education Innovation (ICEI 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 760
EP  - 777
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-360-3_67
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-360-3_67
ID  - Formen2025
ER  -