Children’s and Juvenile Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. O. Grenby
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Juvenile Literature ◽  
Distinct Entity ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Children’S Fiction ◽  
Children's Fiction

This chapter examines children's and juvenile literature. Many pre-Victorian children did not encounter children's fiction at all. A substantial number, of course, were largely disconnected from literary culture by indigence or illiteracy. However, lots of those young people who did consume books continued to use material designed primarily for adults. What confuses the matter is that the distinction could be very blurred between literature for adults and literature for ‘young gentlemen and ladies’. What would now be called ‘crossover’ works were common: titles originally aimed at adults that were quickly appropriated by or for young readers. By 1820, the novel for children was establishing itself as a distinct entity, but had not quite disconnected itself from the mainstream. Children's fiction was still shadowing the novel for adults, imitating its genres, and sharing its concerns.

Adaptation and Interactivity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Meikle
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Children’S Fiction ◽  
Children's Fiction

In recent years, the novel/film debate of adaptation studies yore has given way to another binary between old media and new, one in which adaptation scholars posit apps and videogames as more participatory than such predecessors as novels and films. This essay turns to the eminently interactive genre of children’s fiction to challenge the claim that digital adaptations necessarily involve different kinds of participation than other adaptive modes. Instead of asking what new media can do that old media cannot, it asks what adaptations can do that other texts cannot, tracing the movement of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are across books, films, plays, and videogames to ask what kinds of interactivity adaptations—rather than particular media—invite from their audiences.

scholarly journals Broken promises – A novel’s impact on shaping youth identity

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Berit Lundgren ◽  
Mathabo Khau
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
South African ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Youth Identity ◽  
Gendered Stereotypes ◽  
Made In

In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments have been made in education with the hope of increasing literacy rates and hence producing a workforce that will fit into the job market. Thus it is important to understand the context and literacy materials within South African classrooms and their impact. This article looks at the novel Broken promises by Roz Haden, which is read in many South African classrooms. From a post-structural feminist theory and functional language theory, we analyse how the portrayal of characters and storyline can have an impact on young readers’ identity construction in relation to the novel’s predominant discourses. The findings show that men are still portrayed as dominant in their own right within society whereas women are defined in relation to men. Unchallenged, this portrayal can continue to perpetuate gendered stereotypes, which would affect young people’s functionality in society. We therefore argue that while novels are good for improving literacy among young people, the messages they contain should be deconstructed and challenged so that young people can make informed decisions regarding their gender identities.

Children’s fiction and anime: The case of Shōkōjo Sēra

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Chiara Oltolini
Keyword(s):  
Original Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
The World ◽  
Children’S Fiction ◽  
Children's Fiction ◽  
Translated Literature

This article considers the case of Shōkōjo Sēra (1985), a Japanese animated series based on the novel A Little Princess, within the context of the World Masterpiece Theater, a television staple that popularized the practice of adapting classic children’s books into long-running anime. The analysis identifies the changes occurring in the adaptation, casting a light on the creative and productive choices undertaken by the Japanese staff. In doing so, the original novel and its reception in Japan are taken into account, with regard to the role of translated literature for local children’s and girls’ fiction. The study thus demonstrates that the alterations found in the series are both genre-related and explicable in terms of cultural-filtered interpretations, as can be seen in the negotiation of the protagonist as a Christian damsel-in-distress, combining melodramatic tropes, a signifier of westernization and a domesticating rationale of her alleged passivity.

scholarly journals At Play on the Borders of the Diegetic: Story Boundaries and Narrative Interpretation

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 591-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Mackey
Keyword(s):  
Computer Game ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Common Element ◽  
Game Playing ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Scene Construction ◽  
Narrative Interpretation

Working with young readers, aged 10 to 14, as they responded to narrative texts in a variety of media (Mackey, 2002), I observed a recurring phenomenon: In a variety of ways they repeatedly stepped in and out of the fictional universe of their different stories. Some examples will perhaps give the flavor of this experience: Two 14-year-old girls playing Starship Titanic alternate between lively engagement in the narrative world of the story and stepping outside the fiction to console themselves, “Oh well, if we die, we can just start again.” A 10-year-old girl speaks of alternating between the novel and the computer game of My Teacher is an Alien, using the novel as a source of game-playing repertoire. Two 10-year-old boys look at the DVD of the film Contact, learning how the special effects of an explosion scene were composed, and commenting on how their new awareness of scene construction would affect how they view the film in the future. As I recorded and analyzed numerous examples of such behaviors, I was struck by a common element of interpretive activity on the boundaries of the fictional universe. Sensitized to the topic, I began to notice, and then to collect, examples of contemporary texts that foster various forms of such border crossing, in and out of the diegesis, the framework of events as narrated in the text. This article explores how an awareness of this aspect of contemporary texts may enhance our understanding of interpretive processes and expand what happens in literature classes.

scholarly journals The Foregrounding Function of Praesens Historicum in Russian Translated Adventure Narratives (20th Century)

Slovene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia V. Urzha
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Common Basis ◽  
Narrative Forms

This research focuses on the functioning of praesens historicum forms which Russian translators use to substitute for English narrative forms referring to past events. The study applies the Theory of Grounding and Russian Communicative Functional Grammar to the comparative discourse analysis of English-language adventure stories and novels created in the 19th and 20th centuries and their Russian translations. The Theory of Grounding is still not widely used in Russian translation studies, nor have its concepts and fruitful ideas been related to the achievements of Russian Narratology and Functional Grammar. This article presents an attempt to find a common basis in these academic traditions as they relate to discourse analysis and to describe the role of praesens historicum forms in Russian translated adventure narratives. The corpus includes 22 original texts and 72 Russian translations, and the case study involves six Russian translations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, focusing on the translation made by Korney Chukovsky, who employed historic present more often than in other translations of the novel. It is shown that the translation strategy of substituting the original English-language past forms with Russian present forms is realized in foregrounded and focalized segments of the text, giving them additional saliency. This strategy relates the use of historic present to the functions of deictic words and words denoting visual or audial perception, locating the deictic center of the narrative in the spacetime of the events and allowing the reader to join the focalizing WHO (a narrator or a hero). Translations that regularly mark the foreground through the use of the historic present and accompanying lexical-grammatical means are often addressed to young readers.

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