A recent study by J. Allen Williams and colleagues found that the depiction of the ‘built environment’ — cities, homes, buildings — has increased in Caldecott award winning books since the ’60s, when ‘natural’ settings were about half of all images. Today, the depictions of the built environment occur twice as frequently as the natural:

via Wiley

If we ask what today’s children are learning about the environment from contemporary picture books, perhaps the most important answer is that for the most part they are reading stories set in built environments. They are exposed to relatively few images of the natural environment and even fewer images of humans interacting with nature. They also are seeing less human interaction with animals than in the past. Scenes of interaction with wild animals have never been common, but have become even less so in recent years. Perhaps because interaction with domestic animals is relatively rare in the more recent books, when it is shown, it is more likely to play an important role in a story.

We cannot say that increasing isolation from the natural world influenced the content changes we have found in children’s picture books, but the increase in built environments and the decline in natural environments and wild animals are certainly consistent with it.