Diversity in children’s picture books in a perspective of literature sociology.

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to investigate how diversity takes shape in children’s picture books published in Sweden. Twelve picture books, which touch the aspect of diversity in the categories of gender, ages, culture, nation, ethnicities, language, class, sexuality and functional disorder, were chosen from the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs catalogue for youth and children’s books 2006. They have been analysed with the conception of ikonotext and with the theory of Pierre Macherey’s image in the mirror, of how literature reflects the reality of society. To facilitate the answering of our major question on how diversity takes shape in picture books, we have divided it into two different aspects, one concerning the diversity of the characters and the other the diversity of the environment and context in which the story takes place. Our analysis shows a wide range of ages with many old single ladies. Most children are young girls, and among all the characters the females are more of initiators than the male characters. Most of the adult male characters are single fathers. The aspects of ethnicities are usually connected with different nations and cultures, and rarely described as problematic. The environment enhances different cultures and conflict of class by showing different socio-economic structures such as way of living. We have come to the conclusion that children’s picture books in Sweden show a wide range of societies, characters and environments in most of the categories concerning diversity, except sexuality, language and functional disorder.Uppsatsnivå: