Children’s Literature: As a Way of Raising Environmental Consciousness – A Study

One of the major crisis's in this century is the environmental crisis. Humans as one of the creatures that inhabit the earth need to begin to realize the environmental issues around them. The children as the next generation must be educated well in order to raise their awareness about the present state of the environment. This study aims are to emphasize how green literature could help to encourage the children to get closer to their environment. The qualitative research methodology is employed in this study based on the interpretative philosophy. The Ecocriticism theory is applied in this study. Several of children literature books are used as the object of the study to prove that the children literature could indeed be a very helpful tool for raising the eco-consciousness. The children books are used in this study are in the form of picture books. These books are The Secret Garden and The Giving Tree. Documentary analysis of ecocriticism was used to the children picture books to reveal the way to increase children awareness about their environment. The result of this study showed that those picture books are: 1. the authors are indeed very creatively showed their enthusiasm in raising environmental awareness 2. They depicted how nature and human connected each other. In the end, this study will hopefully increase children's love to protect, preserve and nurture the environment in the near future.