This study identifies the trends of early childhood character education portrayed in best seller picture books through analyzing the virtues deemed appropriate for early childhood character education by their properties and rank. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine how character education was represented in best seller picture books, the objects for analysis were 29 best seller picture books. The standard for extracting contents relevant to character education followed a classification system of six categories through literary examination(Kim, Suk Ja et al, 2012), classifying the individual from the communal domain, the internal self and external self under the
individual domain along with the interpersonal relationship, sense of community, ethnicity, and global civic awareness under the communal domain. The results are as follows : first, a total of 438 virtues for early childhood character
education were explored through best seller 29 picture books. The categories of the virtues were divided into six:; internal self, external self, interpersonal relationship, sense of community, ethnicity and global civic awareness. The Virtues of interpersonal relationship were ranked the highest in order. The next was internal self and then external self, sense of community, global civic awareness. Meanwhile, analysis showed that ethnicity was not found in any picture books. Second, the result of analyzing the ranking of 29 of the virtues is as follow. The virtue of self understanding was in first place(28.3%), love(14.0%) was in second place and respecting other person(10.7%), in third place. Consequently, this study is meaningful because showed trends of early childhood character education portrayed in best seller picture books.