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Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2004;158:498.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Children are exposed to smoking scenes usually depicted positively in the media, like TV programs and films,¹ which may encourage adolescents to initiate a smoking habit.² We should also consider their earlier exposure; we recently recognized that well-known classic picture books, repeatedly read to children, depict smoking. Nevertheless, how often these scenes appear in children's books is unknown. We examined such depictions in popular classic picture books in comparison with contemporary books.

We selected book titles from the best-seller guide at Amazon.com, The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children, third edition. Our selection was not based on sales or random sampling from a library because parents often buy and borrow books with the help of critics' recommendations, not randomly. From the 3 categories for younger children in the guide, "Wordless Books," with 16 titles; "Picture Books," with 254 titles; and "Story Books," with 314 . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Shinji Nakahara, MD, MS; Masao Ichikawa, MPH, MS, PhD; Susumu Wakai, MD, PhD
Tokyo, Japan

Corresponding author and reprints: Shinji Nakahara, MD, MS, Department of International Community Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan (e-mail: shinji@m.u-tokyo.ac.jp).