Gender awareness is considered of absolute importance to Swedish school?s and preschool?s main mission ? equal opportunities for all children. Gender portrayal in childrens literature is now one subject of vast study, since literature often carry underlying messages of the perception of male and female. With this in mind, the purpose of this thesis was to analyse, mainly through Maria Nikolajeva?s scheme of gender ideal types, how the Swedish writer Per Gustavsson portrayed girls in four of his so called Prince- and princess books.

The aim of this study is to examine views of picture books for children that reviewers in Swedish daily press express in their reviews in 2009 and 2010. The following questions were posed in the study: Are picture book reviews based on pedagogical criteria and/or aesthetic/literary criteria? Are picture books reviewed from an adult perspective and/or from a child perspective? Which elements of positive and negative criticism are to be found in picture book reviews? This qualitative study is based on 45 reviews of picture books in Swedish daily press. The theoretical approach is developed from four ways of looking at children literature that professor Maria Nikolajeva has compiled. The method used is idea analysis, which is a form of text-analysis.

Purpose: This study examines pedagogues? thoughts about children?s understanding of death, and their reactions to the death of a relative. The aim is also to examine pedagogues? thoughts about their part in supporting bereaved children, and how they wish to do so. Method: Seven pedagogues, who work with six to nine year old children, were interviewed.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate if the ideas of the realistic tale in Swedish literature for children can be identified by examining four books for children. The four books are all published between the years 1965 to 1975. The methods used to identify the ideas of the realistic tale are the concepts of alienation and antiestablishment. By using the theory of true and false consciousness represented by Diderichsen and the theory of Socialisation by Giddens, two questions are addressed. The questions are if the ideas of the realistic tale develop a true or a false consciousness.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the usage of and attitudes towards electronic books among graduate and PhD students at Karlstad University. The main questions are: How do graduate and PhD students use electronic books? To what extent are electronic books used compared to printed books? To find the answers, a user study was carried out at Karlstad University library. The results show that a majority of the respondents are aware of the possibility to use electronic books but prefer to use printed ones if they have to choose. Many respondents also complained about difficulties reading a text on the computer screen.

The purpose of this essay was to do a research about if the language in Swedish role-playing books is used correctly and if the composition along with the possible language errors makes the books hard to understand.This research was also about to find out why these problems occurs and if the authors are aware of them.I choose books from two Swedish role-playing games, Eon and Drakar och Demoner. I read them trough, noted the mistakes made and put them together in a scoring table. I also did a LIX-test on the books and interviewed one of the authors.The results shows that the books to Eon is harder to read than the books to Drakar och Demoner and this agrees with the vision the authors of the books claims to have.The results also shows that it is not only the language mistakes and the composition that makes the books hard to read, but also the choice of difficult words and badly formulated rules..

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians at public libraries motivate their selection and their purchases of fiction for children and youth. The aim is also to find out what is felt like a problem at the selection process and what is not. Six childrens librarians have been interviewed in this qualitative study. On a basis of a theory of literature pedagogic perspectives the librarians were asked how they look upon purchase of fairy-tales, classics, pulpliterature and literature that contributes to the debate about man and society. They were also asked about their opinions of Bibliotekstjänst, of criticism of childrens books and how they reason about their purchases in general.

The aim in this bachelor thesis is to describe and analyze ritual performance and transference of religious traditions in some Hindu homes in Varanasi (India). In particular from the children?s perspective. The curriculum of Religious Education in the Swedish schooling system focuses on religious life, expression and practice. Thus, this thesis is about ?lived Hinduism?, ritual performance and religious practices.

The purpose of this essay is to examine at how to portray characters in the stories and narratives which depicts one of these children's books and if they really have something to ethnicity and its identification to be done.The Research questions is: What are the different identification markers given, to the reading child in the books, which might indicate that the story depicts people of different ethnicities? How are the characters portrayed in the story and which role is assigned to the main character? What story is portrayed and is it relevant to an identifier can occur?The conclusions of the five children's books shows that it is important with identifications markers, to show that there are different ethnicities. For example the analysis revealed the specific features of the illustrations and how the books portrayes someone with a different ethnicity and cultural background as something exotic.In the texts, the analysis showed how it occurred ethnic differences, by explicitly demonstrating differences between the characters. It was found that the characters were produced mostly as good, happy, curious, suspicious and unsympathetic. Common to all the main characters was that they had been placed, in one for them unusual context and that they were trying to assimilate to the new situations.Depictions consisted of realism and fiction.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how parents? in multilingual families perceive language learning and reading for young children, and how their practice of this can be understood in relation to their language situation and cultural background.This study focuses on the interaction between parents? and young children in the light of the literacy practice. Important concepts such as early childhood literacy and family literacy have been used to study language, culture and literacy practice as phenomena that interact. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural perspective. Through qualitative interviews with seven parents?, it was found that multilingual families have a strong ambition for their children to learn all the languages spoken in the family.

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.

AbstractMy purpose with this study was to learn more about different ways to teach children how to read and to investigate how teachers can use more fiction when they teach.During the years that I have been working in school, I have only met teachers who use a method that is built on sounds. The children learns to read from books where the words is not put in their right purpose; for example; we can se a sun, a dear looks down in a lake.After my teacher-education in literature I became more and more interested in if it could be possible to use more fiction when you teach children how to read. I also wondered if it was possible to find readers where the sentences are put in a meaningful story.I heard of a method called Whole Language, or the kiwi-method and I decided to find out more about that method. I decided to make a comparison between the ?sound-method? and the Whole Language-method.I have been using qualitative interviews with both children and teachers with experience from these different ways of teaching.

Art in the city can be invisible until we talk about it. Letting children see public art in the context of play and narrative is a way to enhance creative thinking and knowledge as well as making the art visible. By creating a prototype for an art walk for children this study was able to create a scenery of children using different kinds of mediated narrative combined with a physical environment and movement. The theoretical framework of the project was picture books (Rhedin, 1991) transmedia (Jenkins 2006, Ryan 2004) and public art (Kwon 2002). The project?s aim was to create an empirical context for primary school children to explore public artwork.

The purpose of this study is to analyze picture books from a gender perspective. The books are found in a book box that the libraries send out to preschools. This study is based on the following questions:How are boys and girls portrayed in picture books?Do the picture books encourage or discourage the principles of equality found in the Curriculum for the Pre-School and the equality work conducted in the preschools?I performed a qualitative text and picture analysis of 12 picture books. I used Maria Nikolajeva and Kajsa Wahlströms schedule of typical masculine and feminine qualities and activities when analysing the picture books.

In recent years, the characterization of the Third World and its inhabitants in West-originated children?s books has been subject to debate. Media attention around a selection of books has generated discussions on how this relates and aligns with Sweden?s national teaching curriculum. The objective of this study is to explore how a selection of authors, born in Western countries, have characterized and presented the Third World and its inhabitants in its literature.