Fiction for book devouring children From an adult perspective : A few childrens librarians and intermediate level teachers perception of children's literature.

The aim of this master's thesis is to investigate how adults and especially children's librarians and intermediate level teachers experience children's literature. The aim is also to examine how children at the age of nine to twelve experience the literature that is written for them, according to a few master's theses written at Bibliotekshögskolan in Boras. Which criteria in children's books do the different groups consider as the most important, that the children can learn something when reading or is it the experience of the literature itself that is the most important? To fulfil the aim of this master's thesis I have interviewed three intermediate level teachers and three children's librarians and the result has been analysed using a model created by Maria Nikolajeva that shows four ways to get close to children's literature. My study is too small to be counted as a general result but it shows that both the children's librarians and the intermediate level teachers mainly ends up in the field that concerns the reading experience one can have when reading fiction. Only one children's librarian and one intermediate level teacher instead end up in the field that concerns the literary aspects such as descriptions of characters or environment and how they affect the reading experience. The result also shows that the children in the studied thesis and the persons I have interviewed have rather similar thoughts about children's literature. A big difference though is the aspect of learning, most of the children found this aspect important, while most of the adults saw it as a side effect.Uppsatsnivå: