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Moral Message in Aladdin's Picture Book

Children's literature is literature that talks about anything related to life's problems so that it can
provide children with information and a better understanding of life itself.
Children's literature generally includes
(1) picture book,
(2) folklore, whether in the form of animal stories, fairy tales, legends, or myths,
(3) historical fiction,
(4) realistic fiction,
(5) science fiction,
(6) fantasy story, and
(7) biography.

In addition, there are several other opinions related to the definition of children's literature.
According to B. Nurgiyantoro (2005: 6) Children's literature is literature that is emotionally and
psychologically able to be responded to and understood by children who depart from concrete facts
that can be imagined. Meanwhile, according to Davis, children's literature is literature that is read
by children with the direction of adult members of a society, while the writers are also done by
adults. In Sarumpaet (2010: 2)
Then here the literary work that is raised is the picture book, where the Picture book itself is a
book that combines images and short text, targeted and designed for ages 5-8 years. Picture book
media was chosen because of its nature which contains more pictures than text, so it is easy to
understand by children at that age. Picture book media is also expected to be a means of delivery
that is not only effective but also fun and can strengthen the relationship between children and
parents, teachers and guardians.
The main purpose of the picture book itself is to build a love for reading and build positive
relationships for children.
Wolf (2004: 228) explains that “ the first way to think about picture books is to see them as
illustrations and words in relationship ” . This means that the picture book is a link between
images and text. Images and text together support each other to convey information.
Nurgiyantoro (2016: 152) explains the types of picture books, namely picture story books,
information books, concept books, and counting books, and others .
The picture book that became my object is the story of Aladdin, where Aladdin is a young man
who starts his journey and meets a witch who turns into an old man and asks Aladdin to enter the
cave to get him a magic lamp, but when Aladdin wants to give the lamp the magician immediately
closed the door of the cave, and accidentally Aladdin rubbed the lamp and the genie came out of
the lamp and from there Aladdin's fate changed who was once just a poor young man and has now
become a rich man.
The main purpose to be analyzed in this object is the moral message contained in this story, the
term moral we often hear and we know what it means, which is moral itself is a teaching about
good and bad things concerning human behavior and actions.
The understanding of morals in the psychological dictionary (Chaplin, 2006) is written that morals
refer to morals that are in accordance with social regulations, or concerning laws or customs that
regulate behavior.
Meanwhile, according to Hurlock's definition of morality is behavior in accordance with the moral
code of social groups. Moral itself means ordinances, habits, and customs. Moral behavior is
controlled by moral concepts or rules of behavior that have become customary for members of a
culture .
So we can conclude that the moral message is an action or message that has character and which
can be imitated by someone who reads the story, especially for children who are still underage.

The moral messages that can be taken from Aladdin's story or picture book are:

1. Learn to share
Although Aladdin is a poor man but he is not stingy in sharing, this attitude of sharing must be
taught or exemplified to children from a young age or small children aged 4-8 years.
2. Can't be greedy
The greedy nature of the magician who takes Aladdin's magic lamp, seizes the palace and Aladdin's
wife who is never satisfied with what he has, the greedy nature is related to an attitude of gratitude,
therefore it must be taught to children to always be grateful so that he does not become a person
who greedy.
3. Don't choose friends
Although Jasmine is a princess in the palace but she doesn't choose who she wants to be friends
with, she wants to befriend Aladdin, a street boy and poor. Likewise, Aladdin, who is good friends
with Ash, is his pet monkey.
This is the same as respecting each other's differences, instilling an attitude of mutual respect and
appreciation.
4. It's not easy to trust people you just met.
Aladdin who met the old man and helped the old man, where the old man was a magician who
locked him in a cave, so from that we learned that young people should not trust people by looking
at their appearance because they are not necessarily good people, and we do not know the intent
and purpose of the people we just met. This is highly recommended to be taught to children,
because children will be very easy to trust someone by fishing children with a food or toy he will be
attracted to people he does not recognize. Therefore, children aged 4-8 years must be taught positive
things like this.
5. Everything needs a process
that when we want something of course requires hard work first. Although not infrequently all
efforts will meet obstacles. This is where our patience is tested, will we continue to fight for our
dreams or even give up in the middle of the road.
The magic lamp and the blue genie inside are just a pseudo thing, where nothing can be achieved
instantly. Three requests made will never be enough, even though whatever we ask for in life
requires a process that if carried out carefully will make us appreciate whatever the process is.
For example, when the genie succeeded in turning Aladdin into a prince, it didn't necessarily make
Princess Jasmine fall in love with him, he still needed an effort to attract his idol.
So the conclusion we can draw from Aladdin's story is that we must not be greedy and must remain
grateful for what has been given because everything we get requires a process to achieve it, and we
should not easily trust someone we just met or in other words we haven't. know at all because we
will not know that that person will do good or will do evil to us. That's why we must accompany
the child while reading this story and after that teach him about all the moral messages contained in
the story. Because the story of Aladdin is very interesting to take lessons from, it teaches something
good and can be instilled in us, both children and adults.