Hermansson, KristinaNordenstam, Anna2024-07-112024-07-112017https://hdl.handle.net/2077/82457- Kristina Hermansson is a senior lecturer and researcher in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg. Her research mainly concerns children’s literature, especially picture books and crossover literature, and contemporary Scandinavian prose. - Anna Nordenstam is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg and Professor of Swedish and Education at Luleå University of Technology. Her research mainly concerns children’s and young adult literature, easy readers, comics, the teaching of literature and historiography.The publishing of norm-critical children’s literature is a relatively new literary phenomena in Sweden. This article aims to map the new literary niche in relation to ideological and cultural contexts. The main questions are: how are emancipatory ambitions manifested? Where do these ambitions leave the addressee? What norms are being (re-)presented, challenged and/or consolidated, and by what means? The analysis shows a shift in the output of publishing houses away from more explicitly norm-critical books that convey a pronounced pedagogy of tolerance in their presentation of same sex couples or alternative ways of doing gender, towards a less explicit questioning of norms and less family-oriented approach. Hence, there is an ongoing reorientation away from an initial emphasis on individualistic aspects and free will towards motifs like poverty, migration and death.engchildren’s literaturepicture booksnorm critiqueintersectionalityText