İlhami Ayrancı’s Stories in the Diyanet Çocuk (Diyanet Children) Diyanet Çocuk Dergisinde İlhami Ayrancı’nın Hikâyeleri

The Diyanet Çocuk (Diyanet Children) is a journal for children that started its publication life in 1979 and continues to be published once a month today. As stated in its name, the journal belongs to the Presidency of Religious Affairs. Studying how children's literature gets a place in a religious magazine is important for the development of religious children's literature. The fact that the periodical in question of the journal has a long history clearly demonstrates this development. In Turkish literature, the first forms used in writing for children are fairy tales and stories. The story type is widely preferred to give children the values they want to be given. For this reason, in this study, fifteen stories of Assoc. Prof. Dr. İlhami Ayrancı, published in the journal between February of 1993 and November 2002, were examined. After the information about the journal was mentioned first, information about the author Ayrancı was given. Fifteen works then were examined, and the outstanding topics were identified, and their pedagogical relation to the child was discussed. The volumes between 1979 and 2013 have not been digitized. Therefore, the study was carried out in the periodicals archive located in the Library of the Presidency of Religious Affairs. Although the writings have a memoir feature, they have been conveyed by narrating. For this reason, it has been evaluated as a story. Some parts are in the mood of conversation as if talking to the reader, sometimes at the beginning of the stories and sometimes at the end. Each part is irrespective of each other. The author acts a teacher and often includes dialogues with his students in the school environment. According to our findings, the stories are not suitable for classification. However, if we refer to the content, five of the fifteen stories focuses on motherhood. Some have been written on the importance of caring for the mother and obedience. In the two stories, children were given information about religious terms such as “fasting and religous day”. In addition, in the stories, there are topics such as not being greedy, appreciating, not being prejudiced, and not breaking hearts. On the other hand, some sentences like “...the bodies could only be recovered from the hillside piece by piece." which are pedagogically inappropriate descriptions includes, but the author's sensitivity to children is clearly visible. The stories written by Ayrancı, published in the Journal of Diyanet Children, inform children about both ethical, moral, and religious issues.