Climate threats, extreme weather and endangered animals. These are some of the topics that the 2019 children's and youth books touch on. The climate was recurring in literature and so was BRIS. 2019 was a year when more children than ever applied to BRIS to talk about their climate anxiety. Books that can still calm may be needed.

Lydia Wistisen is a doctor and researcher in literature at Stockholm University. She believes that the books on climate can have different effects.

- Some books may curb the anxiety, while others may try to stop it, she says. 

Metoo goes again in the youth literature

Sexual abuse and harassment is a major point of contact in the 2019 youth literature, not so much in children's literature.

- You can really see how the sexual abuse and discussions that have been triggered by the metoo movement are going back, especially in the youth literature, says Lydia Wistisen.

Mediates the importance of saying away

In the books, it is primarily a focus on the acting power of the exposed, where the characters want to regain power over their lives. In the book Don't Want, Will by Per Nilsson, the protagonist Nora chops a guy in the scrotum with a key after he paws at her. In Emma Johansson's book Sönderslagen, the main character Juliet reports his perpetrator.

- Many writers probably want to convey the importance of telling off. You also want to convey that together we are strong, if everyone, both boys and girls, say from there you can create change, says Lydia Wistisen.

Noteworthy in this year's Book Testing is also that the number of translations continues to decrease. The Swedish original release dominates and there are few titles that are translated from other parts of the world than the Western one. Of the books translated, 62 percent are translated from English.