This two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science examines book reviews and articles aboutbooks and authorship in media directed to children between the ages of 8 and 14. The aim is to increase knowledgeof children’s reading choices and view of reading. This is motivated by the decrease in literacy and sparetime reading among Swedish children and adolescents. The thesis’ methodology is based upon critical discourseanalysis developed by Norman Fairclough, and as complement to his theory John Tomlinsons sociologicaltheory of the condition of immediacy is used. Book reviews and articles from the Swedish magazine ”Kamratposten”were chosen to be the material for this study.The analyses revealed four different discourses about what constituted reading: a discourse of fiction, a discourseof speed, a discourse of excitement, and a discourse of originality. These were then discussed in the contextof social practice, drawing upon Tomlinsons theory of immediacy and several articles about children’s andadolescent’s relationships to new electronic medias. The major conclusion of the thesis’ study is that althoughthe reading habits among children and adolescents are changing, this do not need to be the cause of a nonreadingattitude but a result of a change in the way kids read and process information, caused by the emergenceof electronic media.

The aim of this two years master’s thesis in library and information science is to study how children and librarians recommend books through the website Barnens bibliotek. In the scope of this aim it also tries to answer the following questions: What qualities in books do children and librarians respectively emphasize when they write book recommendations? How do they formulate the recommendations? And finally, how do their respective recommendations differ? To examine these aspects a total of 50 book recommendations were chosen and analysed through an hermeneutic approach. Out of these 50, 30 were written by children and 20 were written by librarians. The recommendations were analysed through Louise Rosenblatt's theoretical framework concerning literary responses combined with Alan C. Purves' och Victoria Rippere's model of literary elements. The theoretical workings of Aidan Chambers were also used for drawing conclusions about how to connect the results of literary responses to everyday library work whether it is in a library or on the Internet. The main results were that children turn inwards referring to themselves and their personal feelings when communicating a literary experience, while librarians turn outward communicating a literary content. Both parts do seem clearly aware that they are mediating a literary experience to a third part, which of course is expected of the librarians but a bit unexpected in the case of the children. Both parts refer basically to the same qualities when recommending books, even though they do it in different ways. And finally regarding the formula of writing a book recommendation, librarians tend to keep to a set structure of literary responses while children are more likely to mix the set of literary responses. The results also point to how important it is for library workers to understand the readers to better develop collections and programs that adress and respond to reader’s interests.

Introduction. This thesis examines how the school librarian’s work affects pupils’ reading and their interest in literature. The aim is to identify how pupils’ interest and commitment to a new book genre differs based on the level of interference from the school librarian during the presentations of this genre. Method. We have introduced new books in a new genre for pupils in a primary school in central Sweden. Our study is based on action research where we knowingly influenced the participating pupils to different extents, and examined the results of this influence. By applying a user’s perspective, we studied the pupils during their visits to the school library, held focus groups with a few pupils from each class, and gathered statistics of books being lent from the school library. Analysis. The analytical framework for this thesis combines theory from the sociocultural perspective with conceptions regarding reading strategies. Results. Our results show that the level of interference from the school librarian affected the pupils’ interest in the new book genre to a high extent. Pupils that did not have an interest in the subject beforehand gained a bigger engagement for it by reading books in the genre after the school librarian’s presentation. The pupils' interest in the new books also rose during the focus groups when they got more information about the books. Conclusion. Since the study clearly presents what difference an active school librarian’s work makes for the pupils’ reading motivation, it shows the great importance of having an educated librarian in every school library. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

<p><p>I förskolan sker det hela tiden möten mellan barn och vuxna och dessa möten har en stor inverkan på barns utveckling. Vi valde att göra denna undersökning då syftet var att se vad förskollärare har för förhållningssätt till genus i barnböcker. Studien har genomförts genom intervjuer med tre förskollärare i två olika kommuner i Mellansverige. Intervjuernas resultat har varit grunden för underlag till vår analys och diskussion. I resultatet framgick det att förskollärares förhållningssätt till genus är viktigt för utvecklandet av barns värderingar och attityder kring könsroller och att barnböcker kan vara ett sätt att överföra dessa värderingar på. Resultatet visade även att barnböcker i samband med genus behövs uppmärksammas mer på vissa förskolor.</p></p>

I förskolan sker det hela tiden möten mellan barn och vuxna och dessa möten har en stor inverkan på barns utveckling. Vi valde att göra denna undersökning då syftet var att se vad förskollärare har för förhållningssätt till genus i barnböcker. Studien har genomförts genom intervjuer med tre förskollärare i två olika kommuner i Mellansverige. Intervjuernas resultat har varit grunden för underlag till vår analys och diskussion. I resultatet framgick det att förskollärares förhållningssätt till genus är viktigt för utvecklandet av barns värderingar och attityder kring könsroller och att barnböcker kan vara ett sätt att överföra dessa värderingar på. Resultatet visade även att barnböcker i samband med genus behövs uppmärksammas mer på vissa förskolor.

This two years master's thesis examines the experience of children who read to a dog. The theoretical framework is inspired by sociocultural theory developed by Roger Säljö and the concept carnival inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin. The sociocultural theory has been chosen because it emphasizes the role of practice, instruments and communication in learning and the concept carnival has been chosen to analyze the experience of reading to a dog. The method used is qualitative interview and observation. A total of eight interviews and two observations when children read to a dog have been collected. One interview is with a teacher and seven interviews are with the children (six children participated and one child was interviewed twice). The method of analysis is a process in three stages where the first stage is to explore what the children say, the next stage examines the meaning of what is being said and the third stage understands it in relation to the theoretical framework and prior done research. Important results are that most of the children participating in this thesis have a positive experience of reading to a dog. The children read to a dog in different rooms, at different times and the children read to several dogs. The instrument used was fiction books. Since the purpose was to read only to the dogs the role of the teacher who was in the room during the sessions was described by the children as passive. The observations showed a more active role where the teacher helped the children with difficult words. Most children pet the dog while reading and they gave the dog a treat afterwards. The discussion of this thesis focuses on the role of the libraries. It also gives examples on how to develop reading to dogs and what studies can be done in the future. For the program to evolve more literacy activities can be incorporated and the role of the adult and the dog can be more active. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.