Abstract
Background: During health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, children require accessible and developmentally appropriate resources to understand disease prevention and health-related behaviors. Children’s digital picture books have emerged as a promising medium for conveying public health messages through visual storytelling and age-appropriate narratives.
Objectives: This study aimed to examine how children’s digital picture books represent disease preventive behaviors and moral values, using the Duma Says series as a case study.
Methods: A qualitative visual and textual analysis was conducted on four digital picture books from the Duma Says Collector’s Edition. The study employed qualitative visual analysis and a critical discourse approach to examine representations of hygiene practices, social responsibility, and community engagement embedded in both images and narratives.
Results: The findings indicate that the Duma Says series effectively integrates key COVID-19 preventive behaviors—such as handwashing, mask-wearing, social distancing, and sanitation—within child-friendly language and culturally contextualized visuals. In addition to promoting health practices, the books emphasize values of hope, responsibility, cooperation, and service, portraying children as active contributors to community well-being during a crisis.
Conclusions: Children’s digital picture books, such as the Duma Says series, function as effective educational tools for promoting disease prevention awareness and values-based learning. Incorporating culturally grounded digital picture books into early childhood and health education may strengthen children’s health literacy, emotional resilience, and sense of social responsibility during public health emergencies.Keywords:
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Copyright (c) 2026 Esmeraldo Sarad, Charmen Cabatuan, Cleo Tionson, April Grace Subong
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Sarad, E. , Cabatuan, C. , Tionson, C. , & Subong, A. G. (2026). Using children’s digital picture books to teach disease preventive behaviors: A visual analysis of the Duma Says series. Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education & Learning Innovation, 1(2), 89-101. https://doi.org/10.56003/jaieli.v1i2.572
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