Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema der Vermittlung von Emotionen in Bilderbüchern. Sie baut auf der Annahme auf, dass ein Zusammenhang zwischen Märchen und Emotionen besteht, wie z.B. von C. G. Jung, Bruno Bettelheim und anderen besprochen. Diese Arbeit zeigt anhand der Analyse des Bilderbuches Sinna Mann, verfasst von der norwegischen Autorin Gro Dahle, dass es diese Verbindung nicht mit dem Inhalt einzelner Märchen zu tun hat, sondern mit Struktur, Aufbau und Charakteristiken. Das Bilderbuch Sinna Mann handelt von dem ca. vierjährigen Jungen Boj, der mit seinem aggressiven Vater und seiner Mutter in einem Haus lebt. Boj beschließt Hilfe zu holen und schreibt einen Brief an den König, welcher auch kommt und den Vater mit auf sein Schloss nimmt, wo dieser sich mit seiner Aggression auseinandersetzen kann. Die Aggression ist dabei als eigenständige Person, der Sinna Mann, dargestellt.
In dieser Diplomarbeit werden sowohl Struktur des Zaubermärchens nach Vladimir Propp als auch märchenhafte Merkmale nach Max Lüthi in Dahles Bilderbuch nachgewiesen. Weiters wird diskutiert, warum diese Strukturen und Merkmale dem kognitiven Entwicklungsstand von Kindern im Vorschulalter entgegenkommen. Ein abschließendes Kapitel handelt von Dahles Arbeit mit Märchen und Wirklichkeit und davon, wie sie eine reale Problemstellung in eine märchenhafte Ebene hebt und dadurch ein schwieriges Tabuthema für junge Kinder verständlich aufbereitet.

This paper is about how emotions, especially negative ones, are explained to childern in picturebooks. There is not a lot of literature to be found about this topic but the connection between emotions and fairy tales or folk tales has been known for quite a while and is used for example in psychotherapy. This paper shows that not only fairytales have the ability to teach children about negative emotions but also other books that work on a folk tale structure and with folk tale characteristics. These elements help the child to comprehend on its level of cognition and don’t confuse or expect ways of thinking that they haven’t learned yet. This concernes for example the ability to think of people as beings with a complex way to feel and think, or taking past and future actions into account on the present ones as motivating forces.
The Norwegian author Gro Dahle wrote a picturebook on a very difficult emotional topic – family violence – using folktale aspects as an explanatory source to make it understandable to kids. Sinna Mann is a picture book for every age and works on different levels for different stages of cognitive development. In this paper only the lowest level, the one for the youngest children is analysed. First folk tale structure and characteristics are prooved using Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale and Max Lüthi’s The European Folktale as main literature. (Chapter 4 and 5) The characters mother, father and the young boy Boj represent the initial situation that is typical for folk tales. The agression is depicted as a person on its own who lives inside the father and takes over his body to hit and hurt. This Sinna Mann – the Angry Man – is the villain in the picturebook, the one that needs to be fought. The way of making the Angry Man a different person than the father is a very clever way to take anway at least some of the father’s guilt and allows the father to stay the guide and positive figure he needs to be for the boy.
The initial situation, explaining an actual situation, has folk tale characteristics as well as realistic characteristics. Elaborations and explanations that are not typical for folk tales are found but the basic structure is Propp’s folk tale structure. At some point of the story, Boj desides to leave and look for help. It is not exactly clear whether he leaves for real or only in his phantasy but what is sure is that the story is lifted to a more phantastical level with more strict folk tale characteristics. On this level Boj meets the Donors, magical figures that test him and from whom he gets the magical agents. These Donors are, besides plants and animals, a woman from next door giving him the task to tell about the Angry Man. Boj writes a letter to the King, who appears shortly after and takes the father to his castle where he can talk to the Angry Man, become friends with him and be the good father the boy needs. The women from next door and the king are purposely chosen as figures that can be real as well as phantastic to make the story work on both the phantastic and the realistic level.
The second main part of the paper, after having shown the folk tale elements in Sinna Mann, deals with the question of why these elements work so well for explainig emotions to kids. The main book used in this chapter is Charlotte Buehlers The Fairy Tale and the Child’s Imagination, showing which elements of the folk tales are the ones that make them work so well for children. Again, it is shown that exactly those elements are the ones that are found in Sinna Mann as well. Buehlers findings are underpinned and extended with newer researches for example on Theory of Mind and the concept of time in children’s comprehension. In the last chapter of the paper, non folk tale charachteristics of the analysed picturebook are described, that work on the level for the youngest. These are for example the connection between emotions and physical sensations.
This paper shows that there are ways to teach children about negative emotions without scaring them or putting them in danger and that folk tale structure and characteristics are an excellent way to do so. It shows why these ways work so well on children and how it is possible to deal with realitsic and tragic topics in a way children can understand and handle.