"Let Nature Be Your Teacher": An Ecocritical Analysis of Outdoor Play in Award-Winning Picturebooks in the United States

Access to green space has always been a social inequity, but the recent global pandemic has exacerbated this injustice for lower-income families even more. Environmental access strengthens mental health, encourages exercise and healthy social habits, and reduces pollution. Many have argued that children not only need play, but they need play in outdoor environments for physical, sociological, and social development. And yet, researchers have reported a dramatic decline in children's outdoor play over the past three decades. As the COVID-19 pandemic ravages the world, the author worries about children's access to outdoor spaces. Researchers have argued that people in urban and minoritized communities lack access to quality outdoor spaces near their homes. When gyms, schools, and parks are closed, who gets the privilege of exploring natural spaces? The author set out to determine if recently published children's books depicted outdoor play more frequently than she had found in books as a teacher. Thus, the research question for this study was this: How many award-winning and honor picturebooks published from 1995 to 2020 include depictions of outdoor play, and what does a critical multicultural analysis reveal about these portrayals? The author begins with an overview of critical multiculturalism and ecocriticism, as they undergirded her analysis of 189 award-winning and honor books, and describe some of the literature that supported this critical content analysis. Then, the author describes her process and findings, followed up with a discussion of future considerations for children's literature readers as they examine depictions of outdoor play