This diploma thesis deals with the motif of family and problem-oriented topics in six picture books. Three of them are by Babette Cole and three by Patricija Peršolja, and each book by one author is compared to one by the other author. The books discussed are Prince Cinders (1987), Mummy never told me (2003) and Vsega po dvoje (2003) by Babette Cole and Oglas za eno mamo (2009), Tata zmaj (2014) and Samo še pet minut (2021) by Patricija Peršolja. The theoretical part of the thesis focuses on the definition of Slovenian youth literature as presented and explained by Milena Mileva Blažić, and on models of realistic prose appearing in contemporary youth literature as described by Marjana Kobe. Because the thesis discusses the motif of families with children, it also presents the image of children in Slovenian literature through time, as described by Milena Mileva Blažić. The theoretical part also presents the importance of picture books for children and the difficulty levels of picture books according to Marjana Kobe. The thesis also touches upon the description of the short contemporary fairy tale and the model of the short contemporary fairy tale, which was developed by Svetlana Makarovič, who also describes the relationship between subversive youth literature and the short contemporary fairy tale. The contemporary fairy tale or the short contemporary fairy tale with a child as the main character was discussed more in depth, as this theory by Marjana Kobe was used to compare the picture books in the empirical part. The chosen picture books feature some themes that young readers are likely to come across in real life, which is why the theoretical part also discusses problem-oriented topics as explained by Igor Saksida. This theory was used for analysis in the empirical part of the thesis. The theoretical part ends with the definition and typology of family as theorised by Tanja Rener (2006), as well as a mention of changes in the family. The final part of the theoretical part deals with the image of family in the literary history of Slovenian youth literature as described by Milena Mileva Blažić. The empirical part of the thesis compares picture books by Babette Cole and Patricija Peršolja: Prince Cinders (1987) by Cole and Oglas za eno mamo (2009) by Peršolja; Mummy never told me (2003) by Cole and Tata zmaj (2014) by Peršolja; and Vsega po dvoje (1998) by Cole and Samo še pet minut (2021) by Peršolja. The first part is mainly interested in the types of families that appear in individual picture books, according to Rener’s theory, and if and how this influences the problem-oriented themes that appear in these picture books. The picture books were compared according to some categories found in Učni načrt za slovenščino (Poznanovič, 2018). A comparative table was used to compare the common features of contemporary fairy tales according to Marjana Kobe (1999). The final part of the empirical part deals with characteristics of problem-oriented literature as defined by Igor Saksida (2014) and how (or whether) they can be found in these picture books. The results of the analysis show how the motif of family appears in each individual picture book, which problem-oriented topics it includes, which characteristics of the contemporary fairy tale it expresses and whether the picture book can serve as a starting point for discussing problem topics in preschools.
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