In Sweden exist a Swedish institute for children’s book which is a national information center. They have an annual "Book tasting" where they present statistics and trends from the latest publications of literature for youth and children.

In their “book tasting’’ from 2010 a number of picture books had, as they say, children who descend from non-Swedish culture (Swedish institute for children’s book, 2010). 

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the ethnical diversity describes in these picture books from 2010. To understand how the ethnical diversity describes in these books I had two questions which helped me in my research. The questions were:

• Do these picture books have some features which are ethnic stereotype?
• Do the ethnical diversity in the picture books describes as multi-cultural or intercultural condition?

The thesis is based upon a qualitative text analysis and from this main group did I choose discourse analytical approach to analyze my picture books. My working model is inspired by associate professor Pil Dahlerup and professor Maria Nikolajeva.

In the theoretical framework do I assume from PhD student Hassan Sharif (2008) who separate the term multi-cultural from the intercultural term. He says that the multi-cultural term can sees as descriptive, which means that the multi-cultural term work as a description of the society’s condition while the intercultural term sees like a process where all cultures in the society gives space to interact and cooperate with each other on equal terms.

My first conclusion is that several of the picture books describe ethnical diversity stereotyped. An example is the stereotype of the dark man as black and with black curly hair. Another example is the stereotype of people with darker skin color as happy and affective. One picture book didn’t have stereotype persons or characteristics.

My second conclusion is that only one picture book did describe the ethnical diversity as an intercultural condition. The other picture books describe the ethnical diversity as a descriptive multi-cultural condition.