The Still Almost All-White World of Children’s Literature: Theory, Practice, and Identity-Based Children’s Book Awards

2016 ◽  
pp. 101-117
Author(s):  
Julia Benner ◽  
Anika Ullmann

Artikelbeginn:[English title and abstract below] Wer sich mit Kinderliteratur aus wissenschaftlicher Perspektive befasst, kommt nicht umhin, über age nachzudenken. Age spielt in seinen vielen Formen und Facetten im gesamten System Kinderliteratur eine entscheidende Rolle. In Fundamental Concepts of Children’s Literature Research beschreibt Hans-Heino Ewers den Beginn der Kinderliteratur als den Moment, in dem Kinder als die Adressaten eines Textes benannt werden (vgl. Ewers 2009, S. 10). Perry Nodelman geht in seinem Buch The Hidden Adult der Frage nach, warum Texte an Kinder adressiert werden und rückt Konstruktionen von Kindern als besonderer, literarischer Nachrichten bedürfend in den Fokus.   Doing AgeOn the Relevance of Age Studies for Children's Literature Studies The act of addressing a literary message to children is often regarded as the genesis of children’s literature. Consequently, age concepts play a role in how children’s literature criticism constructs the recipients of this specific literary communication and assesses its literary messages. Additionally, age constructions shape the characterisation of literary characters and narrative structures of children’s literature. Therefore, this article posits that findings of Age Studies and Childhood Studies should be integrated into children’s literature theory. Recognising the importance of age for the analysis of children’s literature demands an understanding of age as an identity category (comparable to the categories of race, class and gender). In the vein of Judith Butler’s discussion of gender, this article claims that age identity is a form of performativity, which naturalises concepts of age via the repetition of age acts. Correspondingly, children must perform their childhood and make themselves intelligible as children. Children’s literature, in this conceptualisation, is at the forefront as a repository for and discursive producer of socially and culturally sanctioned ways ›to do‹ childhood (and other age roles). The act of buying or reading a children’s book can be defined as a way of ›doing‹ young age. Reading children’s literature thus makes the child intelligible as child.


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 507-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Gomm ◽  
Melissa Allen Heath ◽  
Pat Mora

In this article, we offer information about the specific challenges US Latino immigrant children face. We then determine which of these challenges are included in 72 award winning children’s picture books, specifically created for and/or about Latino children. Our analysis offers information to assist school-based mental health professionals, children’s librarians, educators, and parents in prescriptively selecting books that align with Latino children’s social emotional needs. Additionally, we analysed each book’s proportion of Spanish/English text and described the book’s targeted age level and Horn Book Guide rating. From our perspective, books containing colorful illustrations that include Latino children, realistic situations, familiar Spanish words and phrases, and true-to-life characters help Latino children engage and identify with these stories. Children’s book author Pat Mora also explains her perceptions of quality children’s literature. Although this article is specific to Latino children’s literature, implications are offered that generalize to other ethnic and cultural groups that are typically underrepresented in children’s literature.


2020 ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
Lea Shaver

This chapter describes the book Underpants Dance, which only depicts four white people out of all the thirty characters. However, the book still shows quite a significant underrepresentation of America's diversity. In this story, none of the people of color are important enough to have names. They serve only as a sprinkling of color in the background. The book's settings and events also reflect a distinctly upper-middle-class lifestyle. The chapter further explains that there is nothing wrong with any single children's book being culturally specific to a white, upper-income, American experience. The problem is that this pattern is so strong that children's literature as a whole is systematically less attractive or even alienating to children who do not fit that mold.


2021 ◽  
pp. 219-237
Author(s):  
Nataliia Yakubovska ◽  
Halyna Kutasevych ◽  
Kateryna Balakhtar

The translation of children’s literature has certain specificities because it must be subject to several constraints: taking into account the double recipient in children’s literature (child and adult), the educational purpose, the diastratic variation, etc. Wonderful Neighbors (2016) by Hélène Lasserre is a children’s book about difference, tolerance and living together. The gap between French and Ukrainian cultures leads to problems with the perception of socio-cultural realia by readers of the target language who sometimes misunderstand or even reject them. In this intervention, we analyze the perception of the album by the readership of the source and target culture based on the comments of the readers which will allow understanding the editorial strategies and the choices of translation procedures made by the translators. In particular, we study the text-image relationships and the influence of extralinguistic factors on the lexical level. In a second step, it is necessary to analyze the role of the educational purpose which may provide for certain censorship of children’s text to which the translator must obey in order to meet the demands of a publisher and his/her readership.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Deden Purnama ◽  
Dhita Hapsarani

Children’s literature is often used as a medium for teaching values, for example religious values, in order to shape children’s character based on the understanding or ideology of certain groups. Through religious-based children’s literature, the figure of a religious ideal child was created and called a pious child. This example is applied by Salafi Islamic groups in Indonesia. The group that bases its teachings from the Salaf creates Islamic children’s book genre called ”Sunna children’s book”. The method used in this article is library-based qualitative research. Studies of pious character in European minority Muslim children’s literature have been widely carried out by Green-Oldendorf (2011), Shavit (2016) and Janson (2017), while studies of pious children in Indonesian contexts have only been done little, including this article. Textual study on the construction of pious children character is carried out according to the concept of ideal child in children’s literature by Purbani (2009), children book illustration and visual by Nodelman (2004), and pious Muslim child and childhood by research approach (Hendra-Priadi, 2019 and Scourfield et. al., 2013). The result of the research shows that pious children are represented through the main character who is very diligent in worshiping, behaving well, and obedient to parents. In addition, the construction of pious children in Serial Salman dan Hamzah is based on Salafi ideology concept of tarbiyah (education) that textually refers to the Quran and Hadith.


Bibliosphere ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
E. V. Engalycheva

The article is devoted to the history of Siberian regional children's book publishing. The author has collected theoretic-practical opinions of historians, bibliologists, publishers and booksellers, librarians and bibliographers, psychologists and sociologists, which purpose is to generalize and reveal regularities of books' flow for children. V. G. Belinsky, L. N. Tolstoy, F. G. Tol’, N. V. Chekhov developed the first concepts of children's book. N. K. Krupskaya, V. A. Sukhomlinsky studied the «core» of the children book repertoire. V. G. Sopikov, B. S. Bondarsky reviewed children's literature of the 19th century in their bibliographic works. The author allocated some organizational components using formal-logical, comparative-historical and structural-typological methods. The first block is related to studying such definitions as «children's book», «children's literature», «editions for children», «a circle of childhood reading», «the repertoire of children's books», their typological signs. The presented concepts are investigated according to tasks, which children's editions solve. S. G. Antonova and S. A. Karaichentseva touched issues of children's literature typology in their publications. The second block of literature reveals the children's book development in Russia in various periods of its formation. I. E. Barenbaum, A. A. Grechikhin, A. A. Belovitskaya studied general fundamentals of the book's history, while A. Ivich, L. Kohn, I. Lupanova considered the history of children’s books. The third block is devoted to printing and art features of the children's book design, activity of universal and specialized publishing houses to distribute literature for children. The fourth block explains such category as «reader - library», considers techniques of work with children's book, offers methodical recommendations for teachers and tutors. Readers’ activity is examined as well. The author analyzes interests, factors, incentives and aims influencing childhood reading. Dissertation researches disclose the regional specifics of children's book publishing in 1980-2013, confirm the considered subject relevance. The historical, comparative, formal and logical analysis carried out by the author will be useful both the specialists in publishing and editorial affairs, researchers studying the history and development of the children's book, historians, and teachers in the educational process of such courses as «Publishing and Editing», «Children's Literature», «Book Science». The author concludes that the children's book has been studied in different periods of its development in the context of numerous aspects, directions and components, which makes it possible to reveal the special patterns of its existence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-106
Author(s):  
Lucy Pearson ◽  
Karen Sands-O'Connor ◽  
Aishwarya Subramanian

Literary prizes often determine eligibility in terms of nationality; this article posits that they also play a significant role in constructing national literatures. An analysis of the Carnegie Medal, the UK's oldest children's book award, and some of its competitors, including the Guardian Prize and Other Award demonstrates the tension between the desire to claim cultural value for children's literature and to construct a body of literature that represents the real and imagined community of the nation. In the UK, this tension appears most notably with regard to depictions of Black, Asian and minority ethnic Britons.


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