This study examines children's picture books about soldiers and war, including fiction, folktales, and historical fiction, analyzing their implicit and explicit messages about war and the military, and evaluating them for gender stereotyping. The soldiers are found to conform almost uniformly to an exaggerated male stereotype. Different value judgments about war and conflict resolution are found in the fiction vs. the historical fiction and in the historical fiction about earlier vs. later historical periods.
Desai, C. M. (2001). Picture Book Soldiers: Men And Messages. Reading Horizons, 42 (2). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol42/iss2/2