Karen Hesse’s The Cats in Krasinski Square: Representing the Holocaust in Children’s Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 2363-2374
Author(s):  
Euna Lee
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The Holocaust

scholarly journals To Traumatize or to Put under a Taboo? Holocaust Narratives in Children’s Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 251-264
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Rybak
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Young Reader ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Holocaust Narratives

The article investigates the ways of representing the Holocaust in children’s literature published in Poland in the 21st century (e.g. Joanna Rudniańska’s Kotka Brygidy and Smoke by Antón Fortes and Joanna Concejo). Phenomena such as anti-Semitism or death of the main character, called by researchers and critics inappropriate for a young audience, are analyzed with the use of the research on taboo in children’s literature (Bogusława Sochańska and Justyna Czechowska) as well as confronted with the threat of “traumatization” of the young reader (Małgorzata Wójcik-Dudek). The analysis proves that the Shoah only appears to be well-represented in children’s literature as many topics are still omitted.

On Blends and Abstractions: Children's Literature and the Mechanisms of Holocaust Representation

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-164
Author(s):  
Joanne Pettitt
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Safe Distance ◽  
Implied Reader ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Conceptual Integration ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Holocaust Representation ◽  
Binary Oppositions

Critics have long since noted that children's literature of the Holocaust is caught between two binary oppositions: it must offer an emphatic didactic message whilst simultaneously providing an appropriate ‘safe’ distance between the implied reader and the atrocities committed. The result is that texts of this kind frequently consign the most brutal aspects of the story to the periphery of the narrative as a lack and the true horror of the Holocaust is reified in more conceptual forms. In other words, that which is said may be explained by that which is not said. Taking cognitive poetics as my methodological approach, I attempt to illustrate the ways in which the said/not-said binary can be usefully manipulated as a means of facilitating the requirements for both didacticism and appropriate suitability simultaneously. Through an examination of the uses of conceptual integration and metonymy, I demonstrate the power of – and issues surrounding – silence as a means of representation in itself.

scholarly journals The Mythisation of the Holocaust

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-207
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jerzak
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Holocaust

The author of this review article critically discusses the book Dzieciństwo w la­biryncie getta. Recepcja mitu labiryntu w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej o Zagładzie [Childhood in the Labyrinth of the Ghetto: Reception of the Labyrinth Myth in Polish Children’s Literature about the Holocaust] by Krzysztof Rybak (2019). She examines the monograph in the context of, inter alia, the research already conducted in the field, literary works, architecture, memorials, the Holocaust victims’, survivors’, and witnesses’ testimonies, as well as in relation to the pos­sible symbolic links of the Shoah and the antiquity. The paper’s conclusion is that children’s literature can hardly prevent the mythisation of the Holocaust, but Rybak’s book proves beyond doubt the perseverance of myth. The banalisation, simplification, and trivialisation of the Shoah, as well as the issues of appropriateness and memory, are also important concepts that frame the author’s reflec­tions presented in this paper.

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