The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare how womanliness and manliness reveal themselves in different children?s books, mainly focusing on the concept of gender, in both text and images aspects. The questions I have chosen to interrogate are the following:How is the male and female role represented in children's books from a gender perspective, in both images and texts? What gender is generally the main character in children's books? What clothes are the characters wearing in children's books? What kind of occupations do the characters practice in children's books? What kind of qualities or attributes do the characters possess in children's books?When it comes to the selection of the method, I have chosen the use a qualitative method, where I use both a text and image analysis. The essay is based on Hirdman's and Hardning's gender theories and alsow on Nikolajeva's theorie about male and female.

Each year a significant number of children?s books, with a wide range of themes, are being published. The relation between children and adults is a common theme. In this study I have analyzed ten children?s books, five from the 1970?s and five from the 2010?s.

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 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.

This work addresses how the book boxes that are shipped to different schools, that don?t havelibraries themselves, from the city library are composed in Karlstad municipality and whatbooks they may contain. A case study is made to find out which books can be included in theboxes. An interview with staff from Karlstad City Library is made and two different kinds ofbook boxes are analyzed. There is one book box with Children books that have a genderperspective and one with fiction Children books.The books are analyzed and the conclusion of this work is that it is important to know whatthe children are reading and how books can influence them.

This Master's thesis examines some aspects of children's books for 9-12 year olds, and the children's books market, from a gender perspective. The main objective is to make a gender analysis of attitudes among children and other agents in the book market towards children's books of different qualities. Children's reflections on gender roles in the books and the importance of gender aspects for publishers in the field, are investigated. A combination of methods are used, including literary analyses, surveys of publication lists of the BTJ group Bibliotekstjänst interviews with children and questionnaires sent to children as well as to Swedish publishers of children's books. The analysis of children's books clearly shows that images of gender roles vary in different kinds of books which supports theories of gendered literature.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of the study is to show how children and adults are described in three picture books, examining how children and adults are portrayed in text-and-picture narrative and how this has changed over time. We have analysed how the characters in the books are presented and how the representation of children and adults has changed in our own times.The material for the study consists of three picture books from different periods, with the focus on how children and adults are described as the common point of departure. The analysed picture books are: Tomtebobarnen (Beskow 1919), Aja baja, Alfons Åberg! (Bergström 1972) and Snäll (Dahle 2008).We have arrived at the conclusion that a text-and-picture narrative is in very large measure a reflection of the outlook on children, childhood and child rearing at the time when the book was published. The result shows that the greatest change that has happened is that parents? and adults? dominance in the books has declined over the years, and that children have been given a more prominent role.

The aim of the study is to show how children and adults are described in three picture books, examining how children and adults are portrayed in text-and-picture narrative and how this has changed over time. We have analysed how the characters in the books are presented and how the representation of children and adults has changed in our own times.The material for the study consists of three picture books from different periods, with the focus on how children and adults are described as the common point of departure. The analysed picture books are: Tomtebobarnen (Beskow 1919), Aja baja, Alfons Åberg! (Bergström 1972) and Snäll (Dahle 2008).We have arrived at the conclusion that a text-and-picture narrative is in very large measure a reflection of the outlook on children, childhood and child rearing at the time when the book was published. The result shows that the greatest change that has happened is that parents? and adults? dominance in the books has declined over the years, and that children have been given a more prominent role.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

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.

The aim of this essay has been to find out if children can identify themselves in childrens literature describing children who have immigrated. We wanted to investigate if the interest in reading books about children who have immigrated was the same whether the investigated childrens origin was Swedish or not. We chose two books for this purpose. We also wanted to see what the access to books about children who have immigrated was at three libraries. The locations for the libraries were; in the investigated children´s school, at the main library in the municipality and at a smaller library also located in the municipality.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain insight into children`s voluntary reading in their spare time. I have focused on printed books and none of the digitally published Medias. I want to examine how children experience the power adult`s exercise over their chose of books and also why they choose the books they do. The method of this study is qualitative with interviews of six 10 years old children. I conducted the interviews detachedly and I have used two different point of view for my study; Aidan Chamber`s ?Reading Circle? and Barbro Johanssons opinions if children`s participation in terms of their voluntarily book selection.I have also studied other researchers and author´s writings about literacy, children´s reading habits, adults´ attitudes to children´s reading and children´s passion for reading.During my study it became clear that children who like to read prefer to read detective stories for children, a result that also earlier investigations reached..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The purpose with this qualitative text analysis was to study how the sex roles of children are presented in children's books published in 2004 in comparison with children's books published 1972-74. The focus was to find patterns and differences. The study embraces eight books intended for children aged 5-9.The main results of the study showed that the girls were described to have a greater bent to take care, while the boys in general were more aimed to perform and achieve. In both today's and the books from the 70´s, the boys were described as aggressive and independent and the girls were often looked upon as princesses by fathers and boys. Violent rowdy behaviour was the essential thing among boys in especially the books from the 70´s.