AbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate how a picture book for children is transformed into an easy-to-read version for children who have just started reading. I examine two versions of Emil of Lönneberga. One of the books is the orginal picture book of Emil in Lönneberga and was written by Astrid Lindgren (1963), while the other is an easy-toreadversion of the book, as adapted by the author Helena Renvall (1977). I have conducted a comparative study as a text and picture analysis of the material, with the focus on the adaptation of the original story. The adaptation in this case is a revision intended to make the story easier to read and more accessible to today?s children.

Many people believe that the analogue picture book is a dying media due to the increase of digital media. Contrary to popular belief, the publishing of children?s book in Sweden is continually increasing, which makes mapping the field quite significant. But to regulate the creation of a children?s picture book is problematic, because one does not want to impede the personal style of the writer or the illustrator of the children?s book.If the children?s book creator has an understanding of how to better communicate with children, the children?s book might have a grater impact on the child.

The aim with this masters thesis is to investigate how gender is presented in Swedish Picture books, in order to give librarians and other actors in the field knowledge about what kind of books they supply impressionable children with. I investigate if and how the changes concerning gender-equality in the Swedish society during the last 25 years are reflected in childrens literature, and compare how men and women are portrayed in four books from the early 1980s with four books from the 2000s. My study is delimited to three aspects of character formation, introduced by Maria Nikolajeva: description of psychology, actions and relations to other characters. It is carried through by consultation of Yvonne Hirdmans theory of how men and women are held apart and that the man in this relation constitutes the norm as well as Nikolajevas list of typical male and female characteristics. By reading and interpreting the chosen books, I analyse both text and pictures.

The aim of this study has been to investigate how the death of a close relative is described in pictures and texts through the eyes of a child character in three Picture books. The analysis has also considered how the child character copes with the tragedy and how he or she finds support in the grief process. The books analysed here are Resan till Ugri-La-Brek (1987), Farväl, Rune (1986), and Jättebra Olga! (2010). Since these are works of fiction, this study does not assume that they are an accurate reflection of reality, but the way the child characters act and cope with their grief has been compared with the findings of empirical research on how children react in real situations.The material has been examined by means of a qualitative literary analysis comparing the books according to the research questions. The study finds that the child characters receive evasive explanations from people around them concerning what death means, for instance that the person is sleeping.

This paper contains an analysis that sets out to investigate how sustainable development is portrayed in textbooks used in gymnasium level civics education. The study covers three textbooks, all in current use. The paper sets out to explore the relationship between the books chapters on economics and those about environmental issues. The sum of these two parts is in the context supposed to make up the books big picture of green sustainable development, i.e. the ecological aspect of sustainable development. An analytical model will be used to categorise and compare the three textbooks.The method chosen for this is analysis of ideas by use of ideal types.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine to what extent series books for children and youth are included in the acquisitions of public libraries. It also examines which needs series books fulfil among a group of 13-15 year old children. The main question of this thesis was: To what extent do libraries provide series books for children and youth? An inquiry investigation showed that a majority of the libraries in Sweden provide these books. The main reason to provide the books was that the demand is large.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine if there is any gender role stereotyping conveyed in recent children?s Picture books. The Picture books examined are the ten most popular which are selected by a combination of Bokjuryn in Sweden, 2005, and children voting. Furthermore there is a winner each year. The investigation concerns how protagonists, girls and boys, are portrayed and, moreover, if there are any breaches of traditional gender patterns.

The society in which we live is controlled by various kinds of rules, both written and unwritten. These rules tell us not only how we should act as humans but also how we should act as women and men. Adults teach their children the rules of the society in various ways, but they also act as model figures. Children are influenced by conscious and unconscious actions and also by activities performed by the adults. Furthermore, adults write children?s books which bring the essential content into children?s lives.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which characteristics the female and male characters have in five selected horse books in children's literature. I have analyzed five horse books by Professor Maria Nikolajeva?s gender roles schedule. I have chosen to do a qualitative text analysis and the questions I chose to ask for the books are: Which characteristics does the girls and the boys have in the selected horse books according to Nikolajeva?s gender chart? What is the relationship between the main characters and the horse/horses according to the theories of Backman? What does the typical horse book look like today? What I come to conclusion in my paper is that all the horse books I analyzed have female main characters, and the girls in these books about horses take a lot of space and demonstrate themselves strong.

This master?s thesis looks at discourses that use the pronoun ?hen?. The media debate in Sweden over this pronoun in 2012 started in connection with the publishing of a children?s picture book: Kivi och monsterhund, by Jesper Lundqvist and Bettina Jansson. The essay investigates how eight librarians, who take an interest in and work with gender issues, talk about the pronoun hen and about this picture book and other books that have characters which are not named as a sex/gender.The essay takes a discursive perspective on reality and on the construction of knowledge and carries out a discourse analysis of the librarians? talk in the qualitative interviews that were made for this study.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate if gender stereotypes are mediated to children between 0-3 years through books suitable for their age. This thesis concerns books that are available in public libraries. The content will be analysed by using a combination of methods, both content analysis of all the books in our study and a qualitative analysis of a smaller number of these books. With inspiration from both Robert Connell and Yvonne Hirdman and their theories of gender and gender stereotypes, this material was read and we wanted to examine if books for very young children might establish stereotypes. Our analysis showed that many known stereotypes are common in these books.

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.

Tove Jansson was born in 1914 and died in 2001. She was a Finnish, though Swedish-speaking, novelist and painter. She wrote many books of which the Moomin books were the most popular. She wrote in total eight Moomin books (Picture books not counted) of which some were rewritten one of more times. The first Moomin book appeared in 1945 and the last as late as 1970.

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..

This bachelor's thesis is an investigation into the public libraries'actions following the debate of Stina Wirséns character LillaHjärtat, featured in Picture books and films for young children.The character was accused of being racist, due to its similarity tostereotypes such as pickaninnies. Because of this, the books'existence in public libraries was questioned.The purpose of this study is to investigate how librarians havedealt with these books, and what they have based their decisionson. To explore the background of these decisions we have usedPatrick Wilson's theory of cognitive authority (1983). We haveexamined which cognitive authorities have been used in thedecision-making process of how to handle the books containingLilla Hjärtat, and why these cognitive authorities have beenchosen. The method used in the study is qualitative interviewswith seven librarians working in public libraries throughoutSweden.The results of the interviews show that the librarians? mostprominent cognitive authorities have been authors and illustratorsof children's books.