Family First in Homes Away From Home: Depictions of Refugee Experiences and Flight from War in Picturebooks Published in Sweden 2014–2018

This article analyzes twenty-two picturebooks published in Sweden 2014–2018 depicting refugee experiences and flight from war. Due to the recent wave of refugees from Syria and other countries, the numbers of books for children and young adults where flight from war and the reception of refugees are depicted have increased in Sweden during the past five years, peaking in 2016. The overall strategy of authors and illustrators in making the flight comprehensible for younger children is to focus on stability and traditional values and to idealize the recipient country. Most of the twenty-two picturebooks follow a conventional narrative pattern and demonstrate a conservative view on home and family. To some extent, this goes against the patterns of refugee stories published in other countries, as well as recent scholarship on contemporary children's and young adult books that challenge earlier narrative patterns by choosing homelessness and forming affiliations through choice rather than family ties. However, the traditional framework of the refugee stories does not necessarily make the characters any less mobile than the new mobile child subjects of international children's and young adult literature. Paradoxically, the very prerequisite for the existence of the traditional pattern in these flight stories is a strongly mobile and free subject.