”Att läsa böcker för barn är ju också en upplevelse för vuxna” Vuxnas förståelse och användning av bilderböcker.

Abstract

In this thesis I have in groups of three, interviewed five women and one man between the ages of 26 and 50+ about their reading experience and understanding of three crossover picturebooks. I have also conducted a survey where 125 adults have answered questions about their use and perception of picturebooks as a literary genre. The purpose of the study is to understand if adult readers perceive themselves as addressees in picturebooks with a dual address. When analyzing the material gathered from the interviews and survey, I have applied Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theories on the implied reader and his research overall act of reading, as well as Barbara Wall’s narratology research on the relationship between narrator and narratee and her theories about the address a book possesses. My analysis of the material generated by the group interviews and survey has resulted in me being able to see how adults, when reading picturebooks with a dual address, tend to focus more on the implied child readers, and their possible experience of the picturebooks rather than their own. It has also shown me that even when the adult readers have a profound reading experience from picturebooks they do not see themselves as an individual addressee. They see themselves as an addressee in theory and only in interplay with a child, this to not be bored by the book while reading to a child.