Gender awareness is considered of absolute importance to Swedish school’s and preschool’s main mission – equal opportunities for all children. Gender portrayal in childrens literature is now one subject of vast study, since literature often carry underlying messages of the perception of male and female. With this in mind, the purpose of this thesis was to analyse, mainly through Maria Nikolajeva’s scheme of gender ideal types, how the Swedish writer Per Gustavsson portrayed girls in four of his so called Prince- and princess books. Secondly, I examined if girls were portrayed differently in the two princess books in comparison to the two Prince books. At last, the study also investigated if and how Gustavssons four books showed any signs of gender awareness. The method used in the thesis is of a qualitative kind, and the method uses was that of a character analysis.

The main results showed that all four books mainly portrayed girls as brave, strong and intelligent. In many ways this went beyond that of a more traditional gender description. However, in the two Prince books, the female cleverness was used mainly to the aid of the prince; discussed as a minor loss of female independence. Furthermore, Gustavsson also used stereotype gender roles in his physical description of girls. The result therefore concluded that Gustavsson combined stereotype gender roles with more modern female gender portrayals, and that the books could be said to carry one less radical message of gender awareness.