The Cat in the Hat. Peter Rabbit. Winnie-the-Pooh. Franklin. Frances. Angelina Ballerina. Olivia.
Animal characters have frolicked, slithered, and trotted, squeaked, meowed and pranced, pirouetted, oinked, and entertained readers in children’s literature for centuries. Published in 1658, Orbis Sensualium Pictus was the first picture book made for children and the first to use animals as characters. Written by John Amos Comenius, Orbis Pictus (The World of Things Obvious to the Senses Drawn in Pictures, or The Visible World in Pictures) covered a variety of topics and featured illustrations of animals and phonetic representations of their sounds to help children learn the alphabet. Children’s picture books, including their topics, styles, trends in societal and cultural beliefs, and word counts, have changed over time, yet animals as characters have persisted. Why?
1) Children like animals.
Let’s start with the obvious: children are fond of and curious about animals. Many children share their homes and hearts with pets. Moreover, children delight in visiting zoos and interacting with animals in parks. A squirrel burying nuts in a yard, a robin nabbing worms from a lawn, or a spider weaving a web in the garden can easily enchant a child. Thus, it makes sense for animals to star in children’s picture books.
2) Animals are ageless.
Author-illustrator Emily Gravett says:
“Using animals instead of people helps me to cut down many of our ingrained and even our subconscious prejudices. To see past surfaces and get straight down into personality and emotion.
For example, let’s imagine a story about a little girl who is afraid of life. She’s afraid of bugs and loud noises, of being alone. All sorts of things. Have you formed a picture of her in your head? Does that picture change if she’s a toddler? How about if she’s older? What about if it’s a boy not a girl? Do you identify with them, or are you (go on admit it) judging them based on their gender, age, or even their colour?”
“How about we change our little boy/girl into a mouse? Suddenly her fears are easier to empathise with, aren’t they? The mouse’s age, gender or colour feel less relevant because magically when we anthropomorphise a mouse, the complexity is stripped away and all we see is someone small (like us), someone vulnerable (like us) who (like us) is often scared.”¹
Animal characters allow readers to slip into the shoes—or paws or shells or wings—of another living being. We readers readily empathize with animals and appreciate how their emotions and experiences mirror our own.
3) Animals transcend boundaries.
Picture book writer Moira Butterfield says:
“Animals transcend international and cultural boundaries, making them ideal for global sales. A human face varies from country to country, and publishing buyers can be very sensitive to it. In addition, there is great international variation in illustration tastes, especially when it comes to people, but animal images are easier to get consensus on.”²
Moved by the plights of human migrants crossing the Mediterranean and of children in Syria, author-illustrator Issa Watanabe created the wordless picture book Migrants. In an interview with Gecko Press, she explained that “animals allow the story to be told without mentioning cultures, race, a particular ethnic group, so the story becomes universal.”³
Animals possess a universal appeal that unites readers across cultures and generations. Consider the bears featured in these picture books.
Culture
Of course, children’s picture book writers need to be aware of the cultural lens through which we view our world.
“All books perpetuate cultural norms, which is not inherently wrong. In writing her popular Peter Rabbit tales, Beatrix Potter presents the British culture in which she lived. When those books are the only ones children see, says Dr. [Mary Ann] Cappiello [Lesley University], “then you have a problem. And when books written and illustrated by white authors who present cultures other than their own, using animals as those characters, you start to see how problematic that is.”4
Humans vs. Animals
In addition, children’s book author Heather Tekavec points out that “human characters can target more specific needs of readers who benefit from relating to the characters. The trick is understanding what the goal of your particular story is. Animals can be very versatile and useful, but don’t shy away from human children if your story has the potential of reaching into a child’s heart and helping them feel seen.”5
It would be hard to envision, for example, an animal taking the long subway ride that Milo does with his older sister in Milo Imagines the World (written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson) as well as to evoke the same emotional response in readers. Children can relate to Milo’s passing time by imagining the lives of the other passengers and drawing their pictures to make sense of the world around him. The characters’ destination and purpose for this subway ride (i.e., to visit incarcerated family members) is sad and poignant and belongs not to the animal kingdom but to our human society.
Similarly, in Ten Ways to Hear Snow (written by Cathy Camper, illustrated by Kenard Pak), readers appreciate the joy of experiencing the muffled quiet of a city blanketed by snow and the fun of cooking with a grandparent. Animal characters are unnecessary here and would interfere by creating too much space between the story and the reader’s heart.
However, that said, animal characters do help readers in other ways.
4) Animals create emotional distance.
Children empathize with animals and relate to them in part because animals are not humans. It’s often easier to inhabit a world of fantasy than a world that looks too similar to one’s own. When seeing an animal behaving like they do, young readers form a connection and identify with that character. Freed from their everyday reality, children can explore a new world in comfort and safety.
Children also perceive animals as supportive and non-judgmental. Whereas children may disregard a parental lecture, they may heed that same lesson delivered by an animal character in an engaging story. Leo Lionni’s It’s Mine, for example, features three bullfrogs who, after a frightening thunderstorm and help from a toad, change their selfish chant into a song of sharing. In Problem Solved by Jan Thomas, Porcupine Pete’s illogical problem-solving goads Rabbit to clean up her messy room.
“‘Having animals do the acting and mistake-making allows the face-saving emotional distance often needed to be able to join the conversation,’ say scholars Burke & Copenhaver. When the Three Little Pigs lose house after house, we roll along with the rhyme; the same situation involving homeless children is far less palatable. The Ugly Duckling draws gentle empathy, whilst ‘The Ugly Child’ would be frightening and confronting.”6
Animals as characters, “therefore, can bring silliness and incongruity, making a story more enjoyable. But they also add a degree of emotional distance for the reader, which is important when the story message is personal, painful or powerful.”7
By providing an emotional buffer, animal characters give young readers opportunities to explore new places and to consider challenging situations within the safe and reassuring pages of a picture book.
5) Animals don’t need parents or responsible adults and, thus, can be more independent and embark on adventures that would otherwise be too dangerous for children.
In Evergreen by Matthew Cordell, the eponymous squirrel journeys through Buckthorn Forest to deliver soup to her ailing granny. Along the way, she encounters strange noises and evades foes.
Acting as a guard during Knight Owl Watch, Owl confronts a frightening dragon intruder in Christopher Denise’s Knight Owl.
In Jessica Meserve’s Beyond the Burrow, Rabbit tumbles out of her safe and comfy burrow into a scary world of not-rabbits and not-carrots.
6) Animals are often associated with archetypes, such as the wise owl, the sly fox, and the nervous or frightened mouse. These prepackaged personalities help readers immediately understand a character and situation—and may make character development a little easier for the author.
7) These characteristics can also be subverted.
8) Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics and behaviors to animals and objects, is common in children’s literature. In some picture books, animals remain au naturel and are illustrated with their normal fur or scales or skin. They may be drawn with realistic details or with a more cartoonish quality or cuteness. In other picture books, animals wear clothing. In some books, animals live in houses, use tools, and talk with humans, while in other picture books, animals dwell in the wild, rely on instincts, and remain silent.
Writers and readers get to choose. Do we want our animal characters to behave as they do in nature or more like humans or a combination of both?
Choose wisely. Writer Lynne Garner points out, “Picking the ‘right’ animal appears to also be very important. I wrote a book with a mouse and hedgehog, which became my first published book [Harvey’s Big Sleep]. This book sold well in the US but I was asked by my publisher not to write other books with hedgehogs as the US doesn’t have native ones…”8
Picture book authors and readers might also consider choosing stories that feature a more unique and less traditional or trendy animal. Why?
In fictional picture books, story matters most. If animals look or act more human, young readers will be more likely to treat the story as made-up and less likely to treat the information or details (e.g., three pigs building houses) as fact. Nonetheless, by identifying and engaging with animal characters, young readers still learn about the animals they encounter.
In their examination of over 2,200 animals portrayed in 217 award-winning children’s picture books, the authors of a 2022 study, “Animal Biodiversity and Specificity in Children’s Picture Books,” at Leiden University, the Netherlands, discovered that readers have a strong bias toward vertebrates. Mammals, in particular, “played more prominent roles in the story, and were visually and textually specified more strongly.” Since exotic and domestic animals outnumbered native ones, “children may conclude that animals worthy of their attention can only be found abroad or in domestic settings (Ballouard et al., 2011; Lindemann-Matthies, 2005; Verboom et al., 2004). This is unfortunate, because native species can provide children with opportunities to develop a ‘sense of place,’ a feeling of attachment to the local environment (Horwitz et al., 2001).”9
The study’s authors recommend that parents and teachers select “books that are likely to expand children’s perceptions and that may spark discussion about animal diversity. Ultimately, a diverse and specified portrayal of animals could help foster lasting connections between younger generations and the large variety of animals found on our planet.”10
In her Children’s Book Insider Write for Kids’ webinar “Bringing the Animal Kingdom to Life,” author-illustrator Katy Tanis also observes the dominance of charismatic species, such as tigers, lions, elephants, giraffes, polar bears, and sharks in children’s story books. She advocates for building empathy for the purple frog, the pangolin, the Chinese lizard, the Sphinx moth, and other non-charismatic and underrepresented species.
Tanis encourages accuracy in depicting animal behavior and the environment. She highlights a few examples of conspicuous errors in the biogeography of animals:
- Orangutans do not live in India as they do in The Jungle Book.
- Anteaters do not live in Africa as they do in The Lion King.
- Penguins do not live in the North Pole as they do in Coca-Cola commercials.
“You don’t have to compromise style, whimsy, and imagination to avoid misconceptions,” she says.11
Tanis advises creators either to be generic with their animal characters so that they look like themselves but not a particular species, or to be specific and depict the animal as close as possible to how it looks in the wild. This attention to detail builds recognition for the species. For instance, Paddington Bear is supposed to be from the jungles of Peru. However, instead of being illustrated as a spectacled bear, aka a South American bear, he looks more like a brown bear. Conversely, in Hector and the Hummingbird by Nicholas John Frith, Hector is a spectacled bear, and the animals throughout the story belong to the same Andean ecosystem.
“Stories shape our perceptions of animals, and our perceptions of animals shape our public policies (Liska, 1999).”12
9) Animal characters encourage creativity in storytelling and foster a curiosity about nature. Animals are sentient and emotional creatures, yet they perceive and experience the world far differently than humans. Imagine possessing the sight of an eagle or of a mole or the hearing of a bat or the taste of a butterfly. Imagine being able to fly as soundlessly through the night as an owl. Picture book stories showcase and celebrate animals’ amazing and unique characteristics. Indeed, “storytelling is one of the most important tools for building empathy for animals (Young, Khalil, and Wharton, 2018).”13
10) Animals have their own social structures and their own personalities. With animals as characters, we can create compelling worlds that can be recognizable and relatable yet also utterly different from our own. Using animals as characters is a gentle subversion, a break from reality, and just plain fun, all of which contribute to . . .
the Joy of Picture Books!
Whether you read or write picture books, animal characters encourage celebration, creativity, curiosity, empathy, healthy emotional distance, independence, exploration of new places and situations, humor, and universal acceptance. They can help us transcend boundaries and delightfully subvert expectations and norms. While not a cure-all for everything that ails our world, animal characters enliven stories, educate and entertain readers, and, thus, play a vital role in children’s picture books.
NOTES
¹Emily Gravett, “How Animal Characters Can Help Children Build Empathy,” December 17, 2020, https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/books-for-children/emily-gravett-on-animals-in-picture-books.
²Jane Clark, “Why Choose an Animal Character?” March 15, 2012, https://picturebookden.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-choose-animal-character.html.
³Issa Watanabe, “Migrants: Q&A with Issa Watanabe,” interview by Gecko Press, September 3, 2020, https://geckopress.com/migrants-qa-with-issa-watanabe/?srsltid=AfmBOopaDqaBHFrQayDlI-V52MnfH4xkXcOEHwnw0CNMIOvTNffJCBZf.
4Georgia Sparling, “Casting a Critical Eye on Animals in Children’s Books,” October 29, 2021, https://lesley.edu/news/casting-a-critical-eye-on-animals-in-childrens-books.
5Heather Tekavec, “Little Darlings: Should Your Picture Book Characters Be Animals or Children?” August 15, 2022, https://darlingaxe.com/blogs/news/animals-or-children.
6Dr. Lara Caine Gray, “Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature,” https://maygibbs.org/anthropomorphism-in-childrens-literature/#:~:text=Animals%20characters%20make%20life%2Dlessons%20easier&text=Children’s%20books%20with%20animal%20characters,fact%20containing%20highly%20influential%20content.
7 Gray, ibid.
8 See note 2 above.
9 Michiel Jan Dirk Hooykaas, Marloes Gertrudis Holierhoek, Joris Sebastiaan Westerveld, Menno Schilthuizen, Ionica Smeets, “Animal Biodiversity and Specificity an Children’s Picture Books,” May 9, 2022, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9131409/.
10 Hooykaas et al., ibid.
11 Katy Tanis, “Bringing the Animal Kingdom to Life,” Kidlit Social #63: Writing Books w/ STEM Tie-Ins & Crafting Realistic Animals, 1:11:21, https://writeforkids.online/kidlitdistancingsocial63/.
12 Tanis, ibid.
13 Tanis, ibid.
14 illustration from Ways to Make Friends by Jairo Buitrago, illustrated by Mariana Ruiz Johnson
