Caillou: a Cartoon All Children Admire

Abstract

The advent of technology, reduction of playgrounds and parents` intensive working hours has led children watch television. Cartoons are known to be the most watched program while children watching television. The development and expansion of the cartoons industry resulted in cartoon characters to be well-known and accepted in the variety of society. In this context, the basic reason for this study is to determine the reasons of the Caillou, which followed by many children in recent times and well-known in various sectors in Turkey, is preferred by children. For this purpose, the data were collected in the range of 36-72 months of 126 children in the province of Zonguldak, Sinop and Ankara during the 2010-2011 academic year's spring semester. The data were collected through semi-structured interview generated by researches and pictures of children. The researchers primarily wanted from children to draw their favorite cartoon character and then tell something about the drawing. Subsequently, researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with children. Survey method was used for the study and the data interpreted via descriptive analysis technique. According to the findings of the study why children specified that they like Calliou the most because of his games and his toys and the most unpopular feature of his wrongdoing behaviour form time to time. Children, who participate the survey, answered for the question of which character they want to be; the girls said that Caillou's sister Rozi and the boys stated that they wanted to be Caillou. This finding of the research may be explained that children indentify the main hero of the cartoon with their sex.