Expressions of same-gender love between adults in picture books : -

This thesis investigates the way lgbtq-adults are represented within contemporary early children's literature and asks: is their love and their relationships visible? Are lgbtq-adults represented in the way other adults are, or differently? Through a discourse analysis of twelve contemporary Swedish children's picture books and reviews of them on online blogs, this thesis is able to conclude that, as a result of lgbtq-peoples political reality, lgbtq-adults are represented only within a family dicsourse and thereby secluded from the rest of society. The homonormative discourse that rules the way in which lgbtq-adults are represented in picture books has consequences for how pre-school teachers in Sweden perform part of their job; namely the task to transfer democratic values of human rights and equality into children's lives. Since lgbtq-picture books make up a great part of the material which pre-school teachers use when working with lgbtq-equality, the content of these books, as well as pre-school teachers opinions of it informed by the homonormative discourse, shape the way pre-school teachers work