A Content Analysis Case Study: The Story Picture Book "The Sandwich Swap" by Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan with Kelly DiPucchio as a Children's Literature

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1. Introduction

"Books are humanity in print". Barbara Tuchman (n.d.)

Wisdom, insight, pleasure, entertainment and being helpful are some of the good lessons that children can learn when they pass through a piece of children's Literature. Simply, they can know and learn more about different people from different countries in the world and that enlarges their understanding and concern of humanity as a deep concept. Children's picture book is not an exception as a type of that literature. Educationists see that Pictures books are useful in: First, promoting the core values that underpin the curriculum. Second, generating thoughtful debate on a range of issues. Third, providing ideal material to develop students' visual literacy. Fourth, helping them to achieve outcomes in the viewing mode of the learning area. Benson (n.d.) adds:

"I think any good literature, whether it's for children or for adults, will appeal to everybody. As far as children's literature goes, adults should be able to read it and enjoy it as much as a child would."

Hefflin and Barksdale-Ladd (2001) described children's literature as a "powerful medium through which children construct messages about their cultures and roles in society". Kramer (2012) explained that "Children's literature is the early foundation for our imagination, understanding of others, and the way we approach the world". That agrees with Thibault (n.d.) who sees that:

"Using children's literature, teachers can help their class through difficult situations, enable individual students to transcend their own challenges, and teach students to consider all viewpoints, respect differences, and become more self-aware. Two approach will help you get the most out of children's literature bibliotherapy, which uses books to help children deal with specific situations; and building critical literacy, the ability to consider various points of view"

Kennedy (2012) defines picture book as "A book in which the illustrations are as important as (or even more important than) the words in telling the story. Picture books are generally 32 pages long. In picture books, there are illustrations on every page or on one of every pair of facing pages". She explains that the definition of "picture book" became more popular when Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for picture book illustrations for his book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a 525-page middle grade novel that told the story in a series of sequential illustrations along with Selznick's words.

1.1 Statement of the Problem

As a matter of fact, children's literature is seen helpful and of great practical benefits in raising and teaching children in many ways: First, helping children develop the language skills listening, speaking, reading and writing. Second, opening up new worlds which enrich children's lives. Third, enhancing children's social skills. Fourth, improving hand-eye coordination and fifth, providing children with plenty of good fun and enjoyment.

Calabrese (2010) explained that story pictures books are of great importance for many reasons: First, the illustrations of a picture book help children understand what they are reading and allow young readers to analyze the story. She sees that illustrations are helpful when children are having difficulty in two ways: a) figuring out the meaning of what they are reading .b) helping English learners comprehend the story. Second, they allow children to practice the sounds of language. So she sees that it is the parents' responsibility to introduce new and interesting words at every opportunity because the rhythm and rhyme in many picture books make for great read-aloud and children learn words more easily when they hear them spoken often. Third, the repetition in picture books allows a child to participate in the story because young readers get excited when they can anticipate a forthcoming line and children learn skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension and fluency. Fourth, picture books are multi-sensory, which aids a child's growing mind and stimulates their imagination because children hear the story, they see the illustrations, and smell and touch the pages. Fifth, picture books can be a useful tool for teaching the concept of cause and effect. Sixth, picture books help develop story sense. She sees that Children learn the beginning, middle and end of a story and can often relate to the age-appropriate issues and conflicts presented in a picture book. Seventh, picture books allow an entirely different, more interactive communication between parent and child because they allow parents to spend time talking with their children about the story, pictures and words and eighth picture books are fun and the key is to always make the reading experience fun and a time to look forward to.

His majesty King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of Jordan and her Majesty queen Rania of Jordan are well known for their humanitarian work and their efforts to make education accessible to more children who are deprived of education throughout their home country and the world. "The Sandwich Swap" can be seen as part of queen Rania's effort to encourage cross-cultural understanding amongst children.

The researcher thinks that it is of great importance to shed the light on the Story of the children's Picture Book "The Sandwich Swap" by queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan with Kelly DiPucchio to find out to what extent it agrees with a group of criteria developed by the researcher himself. Doing so, it will give and show a kind of focused look about this unique story as a type of children's literature.

1.2 Purpose of the Study

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