“Det ska heta unicorn-katt-dinosaurie tid!” : Barns delaktighet genom skapandet av sin egen bilderbok

Sammanfattning: The usage of children’s books is a fundamental aspect within a preschool environment. Even though the content in such books are childlike, they are always written by adult authors who appropriates a child-perspective. This sparked an interest in creating a children’s book with the cooperation of a group of children and producing a story from a children’s perspective. The overall objective of the project was to improve children's participation in preschool and develop their understanding of democratic principles through the creation of their own story book. By using art based research as the method, creative workshops were carried out where the children created their own story through conversation and artwork. The collected data were in the form of transcriptions of films recorded during the workshops and the artwork done by the group of children which was analyzed using concepts such as democracy, participation, child-perspective and children’s perspective. The steps which involved the creative workshops together with the group of children were further examined by the usage of Roger Hart’s Ladder of Participation.  The results of the project showed a high level of participation by the group of children due to possibilities provided for them to exercise democratic principles such as voting and decision making as a group while creating a story and all its essential contents from their perspective. In regards to the Ladder of Participation, genuin participation of different levels were observed from the group of children during the course of this project. The 2 highest levels of the ladder; where an activity is initiated and carried out by children, were unable to be reached since in practical sense, preschool aged children need adult assistance. The storybook created involved a fantasytale titled Superkatterna (The Supercats) which consists of cats, dinosaurs and unicorns in their rainbow world, conflict between the cats and dinosaurs and how the unicorns help them to resolve their issues. Regarding the composition of the 1st draft of the storybook, had there been a wider time frame for this project, the children could have had the opportunity to be further involved and their level of participation during this step would have been able to become higher than what it was during the project.