"The world is a fairytale! The fairytale is a world! Yes, my dear, absolutely! But every fairytale has its morality and message"" (Adam Mickiewicz). : An essay about gender and gen­der equality in children's literature in Sweden, Poland and Turkey

The aim of this research is to study how gender is constructed and represented in children's literature through image and text analysis of the four selected children's books from respectively Sweden, Poland, and Turkey. Through our analysis we want to demonstrate the prevailing gender discourses expressed in children's books through text and image. From this we want to create an understanding of the importance of the selection of children's books and the role of adults in com­municating and discussing the content. The study has feminist poststructuralism as theory which is part of social constructivism. To achieve the in-depth analysis, we used semiotic text and image analysis as well as multimodality and critical discourse analysis. The study's findings show that, based on semiotic image and text analysis, most analyzed books convey and portray a con­ventional and traditional image of femininity and masculinity. There are some break­through chal­lenges in the selected children's books that adults need to attend to in social practice with the chil­dren. The result we have reached is only partly in line with the curriculum for preschool gender equality. Some messages are also in conflict with them