Artikeln syftar till att undersöka situationer då lärare ägnar sig åt högläsning tillsammans med äldre elever. Materialet utgörs av ett fokusgruppssamtal med tre erfarna svensklärare i Västra Götaland, en från högstadiet och två från gymnasiet. Genom lärarnas samtal får vi kunskap om vad högläsning tillsammans med äldre elever kan innebära och vilken plats den kan tilldelas i undervisningen. Vårt resultat pekar mot att högläsning inte enbart hör hemma i undervisningen av yngre elever, ovana läsare, nyanlända elever eller elever med särskilda behov. Tvärt om visar det sig att lärarna ser många generella fördelar med högläsning och att den även tycks uppskattas av eleverna själva. Parallellt med detta visar undersökningen att högläsning inte bör reduceras till enbart en metod för att uppnå andra lärandemål. Med utgångspunkt i analysen av lärarnas samtal genereras här tre begrepp,högläsningskonvention, estetiskt delande och auditiv föreställning, vilka understryker att högläsning tillsammans med äldre elever kan tillskrivas en estetisk dimension med ett eget värde.

 ”Wicked Wrongfulness. Heroism and Alternative Versions ofMasculinity in Hans Erik Engqvist’s Young Adult Novel Three DaysWar”. This article examines the re-evaluation of modern masculinity in theYA novel Three Days War by the Swedish author Hans Erik Engqvist (b.1934). The central argument is that the fictional representation of ChildrenPlaying War in the novel is intertwined with the imagining of competingmasculinities as well as opposing ideologies in post-war Sweden. Thus,the expression of institutionalized middle-class masculinity is contrastedto the representation of an alternative left wing working-class masculinityin opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality. Through differentallusions to heroic men and heroic behaviour in 19th century literature andAmerican Western films the novel invites the reader to evoke hegemonicmasculinity as a schema shaping both the understanding of the young charactersand their play. But the novel also interrogates this institutionalizedmyth of hegemonic masculinity and sets the main character, as well as thereader, in search of an alternative version of the heroic male.

In popular culture, the memory of war is often appropriated through a process of trivialization, diminishing war so that it becomes familiar and desirable rather than ominous and frightening. With a focus on the Swedish author and illustrator Ossian Elgström (1883–1950), the article suggests that the process of trivialization is central to the understanding of play in boy’s literature published at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through the fictional representation of children playing at war, the patriotic soldier not only becomes a quintessentialfigure of masculinity. The play elements trivialize war and uphold a specific form of hegemonic masculinity characterized by courage and honor as well ashumor, fair play and camaraderie in contrast to the adult world. Both narrative structure and shifting of focalization prove to be important in relation to theprocess of trivialization and the imagining of boyhood masculinity in Elgström’s books. In connection with the war play motif, the article ends with a discussionof Elgström’s interwar engagement in national socialist activities.

In the history of Nordic children's literature the Swedish speaking Finnish author Zacharias Topelius (1818–1898) is not only recognized for developing a new form of realism but also for his fictional rascal, Walter. His eight stories about the mischievous Walter, "Walters Äfwentyr"(1855–1856), originally published in the Finnish magazine Eos, is thus considered to be the first children's stories in Swedish that articulate the child as an unruly but good-hearted character. This essay, however, shows that the development of Topelian realism, and the emergence of the rascaland villain in the Nordic literature for children during the 1850s, is closely connected to the depiction of children's play. In many of the stories published in Eos Topelius returns to the portrayal of young boys playing soldiers. In this way he positions the spirited fantasy of children in opposition to the adult world of order and seriousness. This alternative geography of play creates a space for the child's perspective, and does it in a mode that resembles the realism of the forerunner Olof Fryxell (1806–1900). Topelius'representation of play nevertheless seems to stand in opposition to the adult world in a more explicit way. It conveys the imaginings of unruly and playful boyhood masculinity as a means to achieve the seriousness of the adult middle-class male.