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Abstract: Abstract This paper combines the perspectives of animal studies and reception theory to trace the audience shift of narratives foregrounding interactions between adolescent boys and animals published in the US in the first half of the twentieth century. More precisely, it argues that a text’s focus on human–animal bonds can result in its “kiddification,” a term explained by Beverly Lyon Clark as trivialization that leads to dismissal. We argue that the reasons for this shift include the solidification of the boy-and-his-dog convention in the 1940s as an example of formula fiction for juveniles, combined with the simultaneous proliferation of animal movies geared towards a family audience. The case under scrutiny is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s novel The Yearling and its film adaptation from 1946. Despite the book’s initial success among general audiences (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939), with time Kinnan Rawlings’s novel became “kiddified” and then passed into oblivion, rarely discussed by critics who deem it undeserving of attention and unread by contemporary juveniles, who perhaps find the book difficult, long and tedious (Groff, Harper’s, https://harpers.org/archive/2014/01/the-lost-yearling/, 2014). Consequently, the foregrounding of affective human–animal bonds in the book resulted in its later association with children’s literature, which was amplified by the film adaptation as well as the publisher’s marketing strategies. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09508-6
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Abstract: Abstract Contemporary non-fiction picturebooks for children are often fictionalised in one way or another. Many non-fiction picturebooks for children are thus hybrids between fiction and non-fiction but labelled as non-fiction for children and presented to children as non-fiction. Their purpose is to inform and teach, and at the same time entertain and elicit affective responses. To succeed in achieving this dual purpose, this study assumes that designed teaching can create opportunities to separate combined depictions in fictionalised non-fiction. The purpose of this study is to explore children’s responses to imaginary constructs in designed reading activities, and to answer what opens up for children when combined depictions in fictionalised non-fiction are separated and made discernible. This is studied in four reading activities with a teacher and six five-year-olds in a preschool setting, reading and discussing picturebooks about dinosaurs and their extinction. The analysis shows that when combined depictions in fictionalised non-fiction are separated by contrast, and thus made discernible as established knowledge and imaginary constructs, this opens up for the children’s interpretation, appreciation, and creation of imaginary constructs. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09510-y
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Abstract: Abstract Throughout The Chronicles of Narnia, nature plays a prominent role in driving good’s triumph over evil, and while Lewis’s environmental activism in writing Narnia has gained critical attention, the connection between his penchant for nature and his educational philosophy has not yet been accordingly considered. Stemming from his early studies of Wordsworth’s Prelude, Lewis illustrates the crucial correlation between children spending time in nature and developing imagination. Lewis replaces English school systems and educational philosophy with natural images ranging from the transformation of pupil desks into rose bushes in Prince Caspian to Aslan’s emergence from the forest and subsequent abolition of Experiment House in The Silver Chair, connecting nature’s role in children’s moral development to their formal education. Lewis’s concerns expressed in Narnia draw renewed relevance with the prominence of technology and standardized testing in today’s classrooms. As Richard Louv argues in Last Child in the Woods, twenty-first century children are experiencing an alienation from nature that is causing physical and spiritual damage. This paper will explore Lewis’s educational philosophy as evidenced within the natural settings of The Chronicles of Narnia, its ramifications in a twenty-first century context and the real-world results of incorporating nature-based education into classrooms for all ages. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09515-7
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Abstract: Abstract The article analyses a collection of school essays of world-wide uniqueness, written by Polish children and young people in the years 1945–1946. This collection consists of two independent collections. The first is the 99 wartime memories of pupils from Greater Poland schools, created between May and September 1945. The second contains over 1,200 war memories written by pupils from schools in the Kielce region (south-eastern part of Poland) in the second half of 1946. A common feature of wartime memories is that the young authors combine elements of private written forms with elements of text intended to function in the public space (public literary forms). They smoothly switch between confessional style, full of dramatic details related to the war, and the style typical of a school essay, the aim of which was to test language skills and proficiency in creating a story based on real events. The themes in both collections were imposed on pupils by a programme of writing campaign for writing war memories. Thanks to the conditions provided by the educational system of the time, pupils usually honestly and directly described the traumatic war experiences which they had participated in. In the article, wartime memories in the form of a school essay are treated as a record of a microhistory, containing many details related to local wartime events, such as round-ups, public executions, secret education, and Nazi violence against adults and children. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-023-09523-1
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Abstract: Abstract Texts carry traces of the language, social and cultural characteristics of both the period in which they were written and the period before them. Because of this, it is important to read intertextually in order to make sense of the text. The reader needs to discover the mystery revealed by the author during the intertextual reading process, and to know where the intertextual relationship begins and ends. While adult readers may notice the intertextual relationship due to their experience with the reading process, children may have more difficulty in this situation than adults. The activities that children do with their teachers are important in the process of discovering intertextual relationships. Children’s interaction with different text types and the questions asked to understand the text support the process of establishing relationships between texts. However, the activities for the discovery of intertextual relations differ for beginning or more skilled readers. In this study, sample activities that can help beginning and advanced readers to discover intertextual relationships are presented to teachers to enable students to discover the relationships between texts, to construct meaning through questions, and to use cognitive processes. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09522-8
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Abstract: Abstract In this paper I look at how gender is performed in fanfiction, specifically in gender-swap stories within the Harry Potter fandom. Fanfiction is not constrained by any editorial oversight, and there are no financial considerations attached to either reading or writing it, two facts which make it a unique and essential part of the discourse surrounding children’s literature. Anyone can write and read it, and there are very few narrative constraints, both of which make the characters and the worlds open to almost infinite types of adaptation. Rather than being closed off within a printed text, the characters take on an elasticity which allows them to exist in worlds, relationships and stories outside their source material. This narrative freedom means fan fictions act not just as textual adaptations, but also social commentaries, narrative sites which are plastic enough to allow writers to project themselves and their opinions onto pre-existing and familiar characters. This elasticity and textual fluidity lends itself very well to a study of contemporary performances of gender, which in turn reveals how the offline publishing market’s adherence to a patriarchal hegemony continues to produce a gender imbalance in terms of both subject and author privilege, something which doesn’t adequately reflect either the desires or the reading habits of contemporary children and young adults. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09518-4
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Abstract: Abstract Olam Katan [‘Small world’] was the first illustrated Hebrew periodical for Jewish children, published first in Vienna (1901–1902), then in Cracow (1902–1904). Although the periodical reached three continents, the overwhelming majority of its readers were located in Eastern Europe. This article analyses the editors’ efforts to create an attractive yet educational magazine for young readers as a part of a much bigger enterprise: raising a generation of Hebrew users and contributing to the revival of Hebrew. Through a content analysis of the periodical, I reconstruct not only the editors’ strategy to reach children and young readers but also the obstacles they faced in the process. I also seek to determine what the role of adults was in the process of children’s Hebrew education in general, and in mediating the content of this Hebrew periodical in particular. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09520-w
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Abstract: Abstract Ian Serraillier is best remembered for his children’s book, The Silver Sword, first published in 1956. However, along with his wife Anne, he was also instrumental in creating The New Windmill Series, an imprint of Heinemann Educational Books, and one of the first collections of teenage fiction aimed for the education market. This article discusses the way in which Serraillier’s ideological beliefs, rooted in his Quaker faith, can be traced not only through his nuanced depiction of children displaced by war in The Silver Sword, but also in his objectives for the New Windmill list. It explores the Serrailliers’ progressive approach to the provision of reading material for young people moving towards adulthood, and their early understanding of the need to broach the contested and complex boundaries between children’s and adults’ fiction. The New Windmill Series was created in 1949 and the Serrailliers remained the list’s editors and driving force for over thirty years, throughout a period of great sociological and political change. Both The Silver Sword and the books selected for The New Windmill list reflect the way in which attitudes towards the sharing of difficult truths and challenging ideas with this audience changed for ever during this time, due in no small part to the work of visionary authors and editors such as the Serrailliers. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09509-5
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Abstract: Abstract We begin developing our relationship with and for Nature during childhood, and over the last 20 years research has advanced our understanding of human relationships with Nature. However, a focus on human-animal relationships dominates environmental understanding, including through the medium of literature, especially children’s literature. It is critical that children know, engage with and care for plants at this time of climate crisis and this could be facilitated through climate literature. The popularity of children’s climate fiction has increased dramatically in the last few years due to what publishers are calling the ‘Greta Thunberg effect’ – resulting in many more books now available that aim to empower young people to save the planet. However, in these texts, we argue that there is still an emphasis on animal and human consequences of climate change rather than on those of plants and the agency of plants (or lack thereof). We argue it is imperative that children understand not just the importance of human-animal relationships in regard to the climate crisis, but also the fundamental role of botanical life forms in preserving life on Earth. Taking three recently published children’s books of fiction we consider how botanical encounters are represented in these texts, and how this can undermine the perceived environmental importance of plants and people’s relationships with them. Informed by the recent work of Lykke Guanio-Uluru (2020), we consider the position plants play in these examples of contemporary children’s climate literature and encourage a more critical consideration of the place of plants. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09511-x
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Abstract: Abstract Despite primarily catering to a U.S. audience for whom religion exerts a greater influence than anywhere else in the Western world, children’s picture books dealing with the first landing on the moon in 1969 are reticent to conceptualise it in religious terms. Significantly, this is the same approach that NASA adopted when seeking to communicate their understanding of space exploration (Bellah, 1967; Tribbe, 2014; Wilson, 1984). The authors and illustrators of When We Walked on the Moon (Long and Kalda, 2019), Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race (Shetterly and Freeman, 2018), My Little Golden Book About the First Moon Landing (Lovitt and Sims, 2019), One Giant Leap (Burleigh and Wimmer, 2014), The First Men who went to the Moon (Gowler Green and Brundage, 2019) and Where once we Stood (Riley and Impey, 2019) employ the nationalistic “rhetoric and belief and the ritual and symbolism of the American space program” and celebrate the international scientific-technical achievement which enabled its success (Wilson, 1984, p. 210). By positioning their work within the parameters of a civil religion, which by its nature is a fluid belief system, and only implying a religious dimension, the authors and illustrators avoid polarising the reading public. In the U.S. context this is a vital commercial consideration, for research has consistently shown that religious belief is associated with less positive explicit and implicit attitudes to science and lower levels of science knowledge. This has its counterpoint in a greater interest in science on the part of people from non-religious backgrounds. The analysis of these picture books is framed by four of the ‘secular’ tenets of civil religion identified by Anthony Squiers. The findings reveal that the authors and illustrators have used civil religion as a means of engaging with the moon landing without adopting a solely scientific or religious perspective, a strategy that enables a wide cross section of readers to derive an understanding of the landing consistent with their world view. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09519-3
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Abstract: Abstract Despite the influence of Alexander Key’s novels on children’s culture of the sixties and seventies, his work as a science fiction writer has not been widely considered by children’s literature scholars. This study moves beyond ideological and structural examinations of children’s SF to analyze the responses of real child readers to Key’s novel, The Forgotten Door. Utilizing children’s letters housed at the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection alongside reviews from adult readers posted on Amazon, it traces how the novel encourages readers to think more critically about issues such as discrimination, violence, animal welfare, and their own behavior. At the same time, it shows how children understand the book as speaking to their own experiences and concerns and the sense of kinship they share with Key. Their responses demonstrate how science fiction novels like The Forgotten Door can serve as a point of connection between adults and child readers. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-023-09548-6
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Abstract: Abstract Young Adult (YA) literature that focuses on the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities empowers young readers, challenges social stigma and discrimination, and supports identity formation. This article explores the impact of queer YA literature on young queer and questioning readers, with a specific focus on how it can develop empathy within its audience. We analyzed reader responses to queer representation through monthly focus groups with twenty-three queer-identifying participants. Over eight months the participants discussed pre-selected queer YA texts. We found that queer YA literature has the capacity to not only empower its readers, but to develop their capacity for empathy, challenge perceived social norms, and demonstrate the potential of literature as a tool for activism and advocacy. Showing younger readers diverse experiences within queer YA literature can support readers to see themselves reflected on the page, and challenge reductive and restrictive views about queer identities. PubDate: 2024-09-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09512-w
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Abstract: Abstract Poststructuralist and postmodernist approaches to narratives consider closed endings to be cognitively regressive. However, as contemporary crossover literature grows in popularity, through them adult readers have also made a controversial return to structurally conservative narratives. Though criticised as readerly, some critics contradictorily justify the return by foregrounding the inherent subversion of adolescence. This interpretative dichotomy which sees narrative structures in crossovers as regressive or subversive shows the inadequacy of postmodernist approaches in explaining the evolved purpose of narrative ends. By analysing Mark Haddon’s crossover novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as a representative text, a new function of closed structures as en/closures emerges. I contend that these narrative en/closures reflect a consciousness of our spatiotemporal boundedness and symbolise a coping mechanism against the disappointment of postmodern ideals through a psychological stasis or a prolonged impasse. Moreover, they capture the psychodrama of a metamodern “structure of feeling” (Akker and Vermeulen in Metamodernism: historicity, affect, and depth after postmodernism, Rowman & Littlefield International, London & New York, 2017) which reroutes human psyche to pre-postmodern forms, and in doing so, mirrors an active historical dialectics while remaining sceptical of its progressive trajectory. Thus, crossovers through closed-structures capture the adolescent psyche at a juncture where a crossing over between Self and Other seems an impossibility. PubDate: 2024-08-07 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09592-w
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Abstract: Abstract ‘Mirrors’ that produce illusions of reality are often naturalised or overlooked in fiction and daily life. However, they are shaping the ways people perceive and engage with fiction and reality. Metafictive picturebooks problematise mimetic illusions and expose their artificiality, affording opportunities for readers to inquire into fiction-and-reality relationships. This research examines how ‘mirrors’ operate in Suzy Lee’s picturebooks Alice in Wonderland (2002), Mirror (2003), and Shadow (2010). It finds that Suzy Lee’s ‘mirrors’, through four actions: revealing, reframing, penetrating, and engulfing, suggest four types of understanding regarding fiction-and-reality relationships: (1) fiction is not reality, (2) the definitions of fiction and reality are unstable, (3) fiction and reality interact with each other, and (4) fiction and reality are inseparable. This study indicates that metafictive picturebooks have the potential to challenge the assumed notions of representation as mimetic and transparent. By blurring the fiction-and-reality border, metafictive picturebooks challenge the fiction and reality dichotomy and foster a nuanced exploration of the complex dynamics between the two. PubDate: 2024-08-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09594-8
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Abstract: Abstract This essay discusses Ru-Qing Lee’s The Last Veteran Elephant: Trilogy of Private Lin Wang (Zuihou de Zhanxiàng—Dabing Lín Wang Sanbuqu [The Last Veteran Elephant: Trilogy of Private Lin Wang], Pace Books, New Taipei City, 2022) as an animal biography along with the insights gained from the existing scholarship in this field. Taking my cue from Éric Baratay’s view of animal biography as well as picturebook research, I’ll first elucidate the historical significance of the Trilogy in reframing Lin Wang the elephant as a soldier, acknowledging the connections between the elephant and teenage soldiers. I will then investigate how the Trilogy re-counts Lin Wang and teenage soldiers, who have been involved in the historical narrative but remain relatively obscure. The essay demonstrates that the Trilogy extends Baratay’s idea of biographizing animals, deploying the picturebook as an artistic medium through which to experiment with its modes to address the experience of the uncounted, including Lin Wang’s experiences, elephant-human relationships, and the forgotten soldiers. It argues that the Trilogy is a new instance of picturebook, suggesting a new way of participating in animal-human literary equality, re-staging a new mode of perception as modelled by Lin Wang, veteran soldiers, zoo animals, and histories from below. PubDate: 2024-06-29 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09584-w
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Abstract: Abstract Unreliable narrators, multiple perspectives, and lack of a resolution are all experiences children in the twenty-first century increasingly encounter. These traits are present in metafictive children’s texts and are characteristics of the postmodern era. There is a greater need to equip students with skills to interpret, evaluate, and analyse various forms of communication and representation. Metafictive strategies have increasingly been incorporated into children’s books in the past decade. This paper adopts a reader-response perspective to explore the potential of metafictive elements to cultivate active readers. Through a qualitative case study approach, the paper examines the responses of 11-year-olds to two metafictive novels: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, and The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch. PubDate: 2024-06-28 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09591-x
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Abstract: Abstract This article reads E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952) as a work that engages critically with the premises of popular narratives of animal rescue—most importantly, such narratives’ promise that the love of individual humans towards animals can and somehow does make up for the wrongs of the system. With Wilbur turned into a sellable miracle pig in the happy ending, Charlotte’s Web ironically brings into full view the paradigm of capitalist animal consumption in which a pig can never be free but only subject to different kinds of consumption. It shows a side of animal reality that is often glossed over in animal rescue narratives: a reality in which what starts out as genuine love towards animals is too often subsumed into the system of consumption. In doing so, Charlotte’s Web also puts an unconventional twist on what has been considered “realism” in the tradition of anti-cruelty literature, experimenting with “realistic” representations of the cruelty of the animal circulation system without relying on the trope of vividly described animal suffering. By giving us an alternative approach to representing the realities of animal consumption, Charlotte’s Web both critiques the existing formulae of animal rescue narratives and does narrative justice to the actual conditions of animal life under industrial capitalism. PubDate: 2024-06-26 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09590-y
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Abstract: Abstract In recent years, the growing publication of interactive picturebooks and the use of electronic tablets by children have prompted us to revise and reconsider how children read in different media. As a material object, a reading device can trigger various actions of the reader, such as tapping, swiping, and shaking. This paper investigates a type of interactive picturebooks that prompts rotational behavior from the reader through composition and layout. The paper presents a typological survey of such books arguing that graphic design invites rotational reading by combining different orientations of texts and images on the page and the connection of back and front covers. The rotation of books takes three paths through space: planar, vertical and horizontal flipping. Rotation, as a kinetic practice during reading, unveils visual wonder, achieves a circular narrative, extends storytelling space, displays parallel narrative perspectives, and reinforces crucial plots. This article opens questions the non-linearity of reading and about how to account for the body's participation in the process. PubDate: 2024-06-19 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09586-8
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Abstract: Abstract This article examines the translation of humor in《我要做好孩子》(Wo Yao Zuo Hao Hai Zi, I Want To Be Good) by Beijia Huang, first published in 1996, and translated by British sinologist Nicky Harman in 2021. The study investigates the types of humor present in the original text and the target text and the strategies employed by Harman to render these humorous elements in a way that resonates with English-speaking young readers. Utilizing the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and the Variation Theory of Comparative Literature, this research scrutinizes the linguistic and cultural dimensions of humor translation. This article focuses on the humorous effect conveyed in translation and the translator’s balance between domestication and foreignization. Analyzing the translation of rhetorical devices and culture-specific items (CSIs), it shows that Harman selectively maintains culturally rich images familiar to the target audience while translating with substitutions or omitting others to enhance readability. The findings point to the use of Chinese humor in colloquial usage and how such elements are adapted or omitted in translation to ensure accessibility. This paper also calls for further research into humor in other types of literary genres and the reception of humor translation in children’s literature. PubDate: 2024-06-17 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09585-9
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Abstract: Abstract A large proportion of contemporary children’s activity books are nature-themed, focusing on animals, ecosystems or seasons, for example. Their puzzles position readers as organisers and could reinforce how humans organise nonhumans spatially and linguistically, supporting human control. So do activity books glorify human ways of organising nature or highlight nature’s ways of organising itself' Despite their human readers and authors, the puzzles are inspired by natural challenges, implicitly positioning nonhumans and natural processes as authors and organisers too. This study considers thirty recent nature-themed activity books for children, ecocritically analysing their structures and types of puzzle. “Humans Organise the Book'” discusses how animal characters posing and solving puzzles shift organisational authority from the human implied author and reader. Activity books highlight the organisational power of natural processes when a plot follows seasons or a setting emphasises an ecosystem. “Finding Puzzles: The Reader’s Animal Intelligence” analyses line-tracing puzzles, search-and-find, and mazes. When nature-themed, these finding puzzles are ultimately set by other animals and tricky terrain. They emphasise that humans are animals, as human readers sharpen skills other creatures rely on to move around safely and find food. “Naming Puzzles: Looking for Logical Names” ecocritically evaluates wordsearches, crosswords, match-the-name-and-picture, and riddles. Some naming puzzles risk glorifying how humans organise nonhumans, but stress species’ distinctive features, conveying nature’s organisation of species through evolution. Overall, the organisation and puzzles of nature-themed activity books for children are directly inspired by nature, emphasising nature’s organisational authority and so resisting anthropocentrism. PubDate: 2024-06-10 DOI: 10.1007/s10583-024-09587-7
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