Once upon a time in the Motherland : Imagining Community and Belonging: National Narratives in Israeli and Palestinian Children’s Literature

This thesis explores the narration of the nation, nationalism, and belonging in children´s books, illustrating an Israeli versus a Palestinian diasporic perspective. The study derives from previous literature on the interrelation between the nation, political, and emotional narrations in children´s books, addressing a gap in research on how symbols and the narration of an imagined community are depicted in Israeli and Palestinian children´s books. The study is based on three Israeli and three Palestinian children´s books, laying the foundation for the qualitative research on multimodal discourse analysis. The research findings outline a recurring use of political, nationalistic, emotional, historical, religious, and naturalistic symbols in the narration of the nation. It further illustrates a combination of more implicit symbols with more explicit statements in constructing a community and narrations of belonging. The study highlights the political aspects of children's literature, contributing to a broader understanding of how “innocent stories” could act as tools for ideological or implicit statements, as children's literature fosters a new generation of citizens.