The purpose of this study is to investigate how children search for and choose picture Books while visiting the library together in a preschool group. How do children interact with each other and their teacher while searching for picture Books? Which aspects of children's everyday lives are apparent in their choice of picture Books? The theoretical frame of reference consists of Brenda Dervin's sense-making approach to information seeking and William Corsaro's sociological approach to studying children's routine activities within a peer culture. To capture children's interaction, we have observed a preschool group consisting of six 3- to 5-year olds and their teacher in a library setting during three visits. Our study shows that children's search for picture Books is a social activity that involves various verbal and nonverbal strategies in order to include and exclude each other when they find a picture book that interests them.

Publication of science fiction has a tradition in Sweden. Adult-fantasy does not. In recentyears, the 1980's, Swedish publishers have realised how profitable fantasy is. Of the totalpublication of the two genres between 1989 and 1994, 54% was science fiction and 46%was fantasy. The reason for this even balance is that fantasy-Books get reprinted more frequentlythan science fiction-Books.

This essay focuses on the pictures in mathematics Books for elementary school. The purpose was to see if images in mathematics Books for elementary school show traditional gender roles.The aim of the essay has been broken down into following research questions:Vilka färger förknippar de olika matematikböckerna till pojkar/män respektive flickor/kvinnor?How many times were girls/women and boys/men illustrated in the mathematics Books?What behavior is associated with masculinity and femininity?Which colours are associated with boys/men and girls/women in the mathematics Books?I used a semiotic image analysis method to study the pictures presented in the mathematics Books. The theories in this essay were used to see how society makes girls become girls and boys become boys and in what ways the genders are portrayed in relation to each other. In addition, the theories include the question of whether a specific colour is given to a specific gender? The analysis evidently confirmed that the images in the mathematics Books demonstrated traditional gender roles.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to accomplish an understanding for childrens librarians purchases of juvenile Books. Two main questions are to be answered: - Which considerations do childrens librarians do when buying juvenile Books and which goals and motives are behind their purchases? - What do childrens librarians think that their knowledge and competence consists of and how is that knowledge useful when buying juvenile Books? To answer the questions qualitative interviews with five childrens librarians have been carried out. The material has been analyzed through a theoretical construction consisting of theories about collection development, book selection and quality judgments. The conception tacit knowledge silent knowledge from Michael Polanyi has also been used for interpretation.

In this study the book talk is examined as a communicative act with a purpose to convince according to an under-lying intention to promote reading. I follow the book talk?s way from an idea of the book talker (and the library) to the reception of the audience, with the aim to understand how to talk about Books in an engaging manner. More specifically, the rhetorical situation and the purpose of a book talk, the performance and the means to arouse and retain interest in the book talk as a speech and in the Books themselves are examined and the impact of the book talk on the audience.The empirical material consists of observations of two different book talks (both directed to children) and interviews with the two different book talking librarians and a few of the children from the audiences to both book talks. The theoretical framework consists of rhetorical theories from both antique and modern times and I perform a rhetorical analysis of both book talks.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how students in higher education use talking Books. This has been inves-tigated through qualitative interviews with nine students. The intention has been to find out how they use talk-ing Books and why they have chosen to do it in the way they have, looking specifically on whether there are strategies shared by most of the interviewees.As a theoretical basis of the thesis I have chosen a study, described by Sigrid Hongset, where dyslectic pu-pils tried using printed text and text on tape, as well as both simultaneously. George Kingsley Zipfs ?Principle of least effort? will act as a supplemental theory.The interviews show that the students use talking Books in different ways.

In this thesis I investigate what librarians working with children do for six-year-olds at the libraries in order to stimulate them to read. I also investigate how children of this age read and what Books are like for these beginners. The background for the thesis is that reading decreased a lot in ages three to eight during the 1980s and 1990s. My aim is to see what projects, methods and other strategies there are to get children to read. The method used is case study.

'Teachers in current Swedish child- and youth literature' is an essay that attempts to understand the reasons behind why authors portray teachers the way they do. The foundation and focus point of this essay are ten Swedish child and youth Books that were all published during 2012. Throughout this essay I have analyzed the fictional teachers in these Books using the discourse analysis method but also employed a gender perspective. The main questions were these: Do the teachers presented in these Books follow the curriculum LGR - 11, or do they represent the authors own education experience brought forward to current settings? Furthermore, was there a difference in how female and male teachers were represented? And if so what, possible reasons could account for that? The conclusions made were thus: ? The teacher characters within these Books were mostly a throwback to days gone by, therefore reflecting the authors own memories of their school. ? They were mainly presented to the reader in a negative light which most likely has its roots in how Swedish school and Swedish teachers have been portrayed within the mass media. ? That there was indeed gender stereotyping in how female and male teachers were described..

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine if stereotype gender patterns are showing, and how they are showing, in the picture Books that have the highest number of loan in Sweden?s three biggest cities. It is also a purpose to show if these gender patterns can be compared to the outlook on gender in the curriculum. The method used is a qualitative text analysis. 13 picture Books are analyzed on the basis of Yvonne Hirdman?s theories on gender and Maria Nikolajeva?s theories on children?s literature.

This study analyses five different picture Books from the last few decades. The aim of the analysis was to investigate how relations between children and adults are presented in the picture Books. One way to achieve this has been to focus on the adults? presence or absence in the narrative, and also what kind of authority the adult(s) can have in the action and how it can affect relations between children and adults. The idea is that this degree project can be adapted for practical use in school.

The aim of this essay is to analyze six picture Books from a gender perspective. Research and investigations shows that children's literature has a big influence on how young children understand norms and values related to gender identity. It is written in the Swedish curriculum for the non-compulsory school system that the pre-school should counteract traditional gender roles.In this essay, six picture Books with stories that take place in a pre-school or a pre-school class are being analyzed. Two of them, according to their market strategy, challenges established gender norms. I have investigated if there are any differences between how the educator as a character and the pre-school are portrayed where a girl contra a boy has the leading role.

In this essay there will be four text Books from grade 1 studied, the first one are from the year 1976 and it will be going forward to the year 2012. The aim of this study is to see how the genders are depicted and represented, as well as what roles the genders are given. I do also want to see if there is a notable change in this over time. I will be doing a study based on the quantity of the contents, and I will also be doing a critical discourse analysis.The result of the study showed that there were more gender-based constructions that referred to women in all of the four Books, which indicates that women are represented more often in these reading Books. It is most common to portray the genders in their stereotypical roles, which again are present in society, but sometimes these roles are depart from what?s present in society.

Biological diversity is one out of four dimensions, characterizing the subject of Biology ac-cording to the school curriculum. As a concept, biological diversity had its break through at the UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where the convention about bio-logical diversity, named CBD, was signed. According to the convention, almost all the na-tions of the world have engaged themselves to preserve the national diversity of species, in-cluding the diversity of genetics and ecological systems.This thesis focuses the biological diversity from the perspective of school Books. The aim is to find out how the biological diversity is presented in biology Books for students aged 12-15 years.In 1994, the current Swedish secondary and high school curriculum called LPO-94 was pre-sented. The biology Books used in this study were published between 1994 and 2007, all of them exist in many editions and are published by three different publishers.The conclusion of the study is that all the biology Books that were examined have reached different levels of the development in the field of biological diversity..

This thesis investigates young people´s (16-21) preferences in reading through a survey including interviews and questionnaires. The groups attitudes towards reading and libraries, their reading and library habits, and to what extent eight libraries had bought the preferred literature were also examined. Some reports from the 80´s were used to find the changes. The result shows that youngsters read and visit libraries somewhat more frequently. Trivial literature is not as dominant, more teenage-Books were read.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how contemporary Swedish picture-Books describe ethnicity. The analysis is based upon eight Books that were published during the period 1996 to 2006. The thesis is based upon a qualitative content analysis and a model of analysis that has been constructed with inspiration from Maria Nikolajeva and Pil Dahlerup and their conceptions of analyzing literature. The study?s theoretical framework is primarily based on the sociology of literature and the perspective of the society in literature.