| Nowadays there is a big push for parents to read to their children early and often. Reading connects us to our children; through the stories we read as a child, we connect the world we learned and understood to their world. Reading books that we read and loved encourages a thread from our understanding of what it means to be a member of the community to which we belong. When we read, we know we like morals that communicate the basics: honorable action, ideal interpersonal interaction, and modeling of desirable attitude. Books helped form our cultural identity, just as the books we are reading to our children are helping to form their identity.;This dissertation explores Erik Erikson ideas of identity development and how he understands the American identity. Erikson's three main themes are then applied to three popular books of Dr. Seuss to examine the ways in which the American identity is reflected in American children's literature. It was confirmed that the three books used for this analysis did contain the ideals of the American identity identified by Erik Erikson, within his book. |
