The purpose of our master thesis was to investigate how a multicultural society is reflected in childrens books Picture books, books for children and young people, published in 2002. We found this issue interesting since children of today experience a change in society, where people of many ethnicities, cultures and religions live together to a greater extent than before. Since children in their everyday life are exposed to these different cultures, we think they also should be exposed to them in the books they read. In order to enhance an understanding of why such books are important to children, especially immigrant children, we have in our thesis included a passage with childrens linguistic development, identification and stereotypes. Other passages concern libraries and their roles in a multicultural society.

The purpose of this essay is to look at how the depiction of cats is performed in childrens? Picture books. I will analyze eight pictures from four different books, two from each. The books are from two different decades: from the 1960s and from the 2000s.My ambition is to see if there are any artistic or cultural differences when comparing the two decades? depictions of cats to each other.

In this essay I have studied how the kid?s school start are described in Picture books. The studied questions are: How the school is described in these selected Picture books; what feeling does the main character have into the school start; how the teachers are described in this selected Picture books and how are the power relationship described in these selected Picture books?The method I have chosen for this essay is a discourse analysis of seven selected Picture books with the meaning of starting school. All books studied are written during the 1990 and forward.

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 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.

The aim of this study is to increase the knowledge regarding the selection process of Picture books by pre-school educators. My intention is to find out which criteria educators use to select the books. I have restricted the study to pre-school educators, because I wish to find out how they work with the selection process and which criteria and considerations are included. I also want to know if the children have influence in the book selection and how the books get to the pre-school.The study is based on qualitative interviews with educators at a pre-schools in my area as well as relevant publications. The questions the educators were given were semi-structured.

The aim of this study is to investigate parents attitudes towards Picture books and childrens reading. The study is based upon qualitative interviews with seven parents, 29-44 years of age, who have children between 3 and 6 years of age. The study is hermeneutic. The conceptual framework used in this study, is Uffe Seilmans categories of different kinds of attitudes towards childrens sparetime occupations, for example reading. These are the authoritarian, the laissez-faire and the democratic attitudes.

In Sweden exist a Swedish institute for children?s book which is a national information center. They have an annual "Book tasting" where they present statistics and trends from the latest publications of literature for youth and children.In their ?book tasting?? from 2010 a number of Picture books had, as they say, children who descend from non-Swedish culture (Swedish institute for children?s book, 2010). The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the ethnical diversity describes in these Picture books from 2010. To understand how the ethnical diversity describes in these books I had two questions which helped me in my research.

Our intention with this work has been to examine if books in one particular subject share the same ideology, or if they contain several different ideologies. We have chosen to study and analyse books that deal with death and grief. We suggest that we will get an idea of how society looks upon death by examine how death is presented in books for young children. We have studied and adopted well-known writers on the topic to give sufficient background to our research. In the main public library of Gothenburg we found the latest bookindex of different themes recommended by Bibliotekstjänst.

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.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine the picture book canonization process in pre-schools. To succeed in this I have examined what pre-school staff believe to be the criteria of a good picture book. Together with an observation of the pre-schools current collection, other factors which can influence the collection of the picture book are included. This constitutes the foundation for a description of the pre-school picture book canon. To pursue this goal, I have used the methodology of focus group interviews with staff from two pre-schools in a middle-sized town.

This study is about the importance of pictures to children's pleasure in reading. The aim of this study was to investigate pupils ' thoughts about the pictures in Picture books. I wanted to find out if the pictures in the books are of importance to children's pleasure in reading and why. Also what types of pictures that create the pleasure in reading and why. Through literature, I see why it is important to read books and how teachers can create encouraging reading among children.

In this thesis I investigate aesthetic preference for Picture books among children aged 3?6 as well as criteria for preference among parents. Through my design project: illustration of a picture book, I aim to put my research on preference in the context of illustration and design. By using the design project as an applied method for research I have sought to answer how one as an illustrator can apply knowledge regarding preferences of the target groups when illustrating for Picture books. I have primarily based my research within the field of cognitive developmental psychology, with primary focus on stage theory, and the field of literature.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze children?s Picture books regarding whether and in what form gender stereotypes can be seen in these. The purpose is also to evaluate whether the findings correlate to the different regulatory documents libraries have to abide to.       The study comprises five books, who are part of a selection of books especially chosen by Uppsala City Library to be used by primary school children aged 6-9. The method used is the study of text as well as illustrations, as the theory of this thesis is that the two cannot be separated, but has to be seen a unit. Other theories used in the analysis include Nikolajeva?s schedule of male/female properties and theories on gender.      The result of the study shows that gender stereotypes are in majority regarding the characters in the books, but that the opposite also exists.

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.