Browsing by Author "Matikainen, Anni"

There is an increasing number of children from culturally diverse backgrounds in Finland. Previous studies have shown the significance of children’s literature and, more specifically, the importance of picture books and the representations they have in them to children. Therefore, it is important to present representations of children with various cultural backgrounds in Finnish picture books. Based on this thought, the idea of this research was to study the representations of cultural diversity in Finnish picture books from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. The aim of this study was to contribute to the research field of Finnish children’s literature, especially picture books. The research material consisted of the book series Päiväkoti Heippakamu written by Veera Salmi and illustrated by Elina Warsta. The series consists of four picture books published in 2016-2020. The analysis method of the study was qualitative theory-guided content analysis, which was used to analyze the material based on the theoretical framework of the study and the research questions. Cultural diversity was presented in the book series mainly through illustrations describing the appearance and ethnic background of the characters. There were also references to cultural diversity in the text, mainly in the form of diverse names and multilingualism. Thus, cultural diversity was not specifically addressed in the book series. It created representations of children with diverse appearances and diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. A wide variety of diverse children were portrayed as an ordinary part of Finnish society. Nonetheless, in some of the representations, mostly in the illustration, some patterning and stereotyping could be observed. However, the representations in the book series were mostly positive and therefore they also create a positive image of cultural diversity in general. The results of this study largely followed previous research, but with the particularly diverse representations and the normalization of cultural diversity, the book series Päiväkoti Heippakamu can set an example in portraying cultural diversity to other picture books in the future.