Antropocenens barn - Hur bilderböcker om klimat och miljö skapar barn som ska rädda världen

In this thesis I examine the view on and relationship between nature and children that is communicated in picture books on climate change and the environment. Departing from the position that education in the Anthropocene must take a new direction in how humans view their own place in nature, I look more closely at the ideas that enter preschools in Sweden through six picture books recommended by the university library of Malmö for reading about climate and the environment with children in Early Years Education. My purpose is to analyze and understand the values that such books convey on nature and on the relationship between the human and more-than-human world. To serve this purpose I pose three research questions: In what way is nature portrayed in the books? Which role play children in relation to nature in the books? & How is the relation between humans and nature characterized in the books?I follow an ecocritical perspective and dip into ideas of the common worlds of children and nature. My methodological approach is a qualitative one, involving visual text analysis and the Nature in Culture matrix. By applying these theoretical and methodological tools I identify common ecocritical metaphors coined by Greg Garrard such as the apocalypse, pastoral, wilderness, dwelling, animals and earth, that together create an image of earth as fragile and nature as separated from humans in the examined picture books. Children are romanticized as the independent protectors of nature and saviors of the earth. While small details of entangled relations between nature and children suggest ideas of more common world perspectives, the overall values of the picture books reinforce an anthropocentric attitude towards nature. I conclude that the view of children reinstating harmony in nature places a problematic and romanticized responsibility on children in climate and environmental fiction of the Anthropocene