Boys' representation in proposed and compulsory literature of Slovene authors in a nine-year program primary school (Curriculum, 2011)

This master's thesis presents a contemporary insight into dealing with youth literary books – with the emphasis on picture books – which young readers come across during their nine years at elementary school at Slovene language lessons. In the theoretical part, the periods of youth literature on Slovenian territory are introduced. Further on, a picture book, as a special type of a child’s first book (Kobe, 1987), is presented. The latter theory is upgraded by the theory of M. Nikolajeva and C. Scott (2000), which focuses on the interactions between picture-book texts and illustrations. The theoretical part focuses primarily on the broad notion of gender equality, which, in this final work, includes the images of boys and girls, and the representation of both characters in the Slovenian youth literature. Then, with the presentation of the curricula of 2011 and 2019, which serve as the basis for the research work, I introduce the subtle domination of one gender, which not only appears in the economic and political sphere, but also in the education field. The first part of the thesis is rounded up with the research results on the effects of gender bias youth literature on young readers. The empirical part begins with the classification of Slovenian youth literature in the curricula (2011 and 2019) according to the gender of the authors, illustrators, titles and the gender of the main characters. When analysing the boys’ images, I focus on the four elements of masculinity – power, labour division, libidinal investment and symbolism – (Connell, 2012) from texts and illustrations. These elements still define and help understand the inequality nowadays when dealing with gender. Finally, we categorize the selected picture books regarding the complementarity of texts and illustrations