scholarly journals Overgange. Børne- og ungdomslitteratur og barndomsopfattelser i bevægelse

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (75) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Christensen

“Transitions. Children’s Literature and Young Adult Fiction on the Move”The article gives an overview of current changes and tendencies within children’s literature and young adult fiction, as well as the research related to this field. Until recently, the book was considered the primary medium for literature for children, but the production of narratives that move across media is expanding. This calls for approaches that take the interaction of sound, image, verbal text and medium into consideration. Today, children and young people are considered individuals with agency, with the right and opportunity to influence their own situation, and this has led to an increasing interest in children’s use and production of texts. The article discusses aspects of this development, links it to a historical framework, and proposes a model that focuses on the interaction between different modes of expressions, media, producers and readers. In continuation of this, the article debates approaches to childhood within children’s literature studies, in particular the ‘kinship model’ proposed by Marah Gubar. This model suggests a focus on the continuum and the similarities between children and adults, instead of an approach to children that stresses their deficits or the differences between children and adults. The article concludes that the increasing interaction between children’s books and other media calls for interaction between children’s literature studies and media studies, and that many aspects point to a need for viewing the child as an active agent in the use and production of texts.

Author(s):  
Rebekah Sheldon

In the conclusion of The Child to Come, the book asks, ‘What happens when the life figured by the child--innocent, self-similar human life at home on a homely Earth--no longer has the strength to hold back the vitality that animates it?’ This chapter looks at two kinds of texts that consider this question: Anthropocene cinema and Young Adult Fiction. By focusing on the role of human action, the Anthropocene obscures a far more threatening reality: the collapse of the regulative. In relation, both children’s literature and young adult literature grow out of and as disciplinary apparatuses trained on that fraught transit between the presumptive difference of those still in their minority and the socially necessary sameness that is inscribed into fully attained adulthood.


Author(s):  
Hervé Cantero

Generations of Australian children have been presented with iconic figures and values associated with the events of 1915 at Gallipoli and involved in the ritual practices of remembrance exemplified by Anzac Day ceremonies throughout a corpus of children’s literature which ranges from picture books for pre-schoolers to young adult fiction. This paper aims to broadly identify the narrative strategies at work in a selection of recent stories of brave animals helping the Aussie boys under fire or paeans to the duty of personal and communal remembrance and to examine them in a larger context of national self-representation.


Author(s):  
Michelle J. Smith

The Gothic has become a dominant mode in children’s and young adult fiction published in the past decade. This chapter considers how Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child (2007), Chris Priestley’s Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror (2007), Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2008), and Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011) all represent dead or ghostly children who, in diverse ways, work to critique or remedy adult actions, particularly through their interactions with history. Contemporary Gothic children’s literature is, this chapter argues, distinctly different from Gothic fictions for adults, which often represent children as the bearers of death. In contrast, Gothic children’s literature displaces the anxieties that ordinarily accompany the representation of child death in realist fiction.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail De Vos

Have you been following Amy’s Marathon of books? Inspired by by Terry Fox’s and Rick Hansen’s Canadian journeys, Amy Mathers is honouring her passion for reading and Canadian teen literature while working around her physical limitations through a Marathon of Books. Amy will be reading teen fiction books from every province and territory, exploring Canada and promoting Canadian teen authors and books by finishing a book a day for each day of 2014, writing a review for each book she reads. The goal is to raise money for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) in order to endow a Canadian teen book award to be presented at the yearly Canadian Children’s Literature Awards gala. Amy will collect fundraising pledges (which are eligible for a charitable tax receipt). http://amysmarathonofbooks.ca/The National Reading Campaign (NRC) is thrilled to announce the inaugural week-long event READING TOWN CANADA. For one week, May 3-10th, 2014, the National Reading Campaign will turn Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan into an exemplary model of what a reading Canada would look like. Reading will be woven into every feature of life through a series of exciting events: Imagine having a poem delivered with your pizza, wandering into a fully-stocked ‘reading glen’ in Crescent Park, discovering a book by a local author in your Welcome Wagon package, or finding a tiny lending library at the end of your street. http://www.nationalreadingcampaign.ca/about-reading-town-canada/IBBY Canada (the Canadian national section of the International Board on Books for Young People) named Bonnie Tulloch as the Frances E. Russell Grant recipient. Bonnie is a graduate student in the children’s literature program of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is doing an analysis of contemporary Canadian children’s and young adult novels that focus on island adventures; the resulting work will be titled “No ‘Man’ is an Island: Examining Island Imagery and its Relation to Female Identity in a Selection of Canadian Children’s and Young Adult Fiction.” http://www.ibby-canada.org/?p=2080CANSCAIP is presenting two upcoming workshops: Imagine a Story, a day of workshops for those interested in writing, illustrating and performing for children, will be held May 31 at Dawson College in Montreal; Packaging Your Imagination, Canada's oldest and largest conference on the craft and business of writing, illustrating and performing for children, will be held October 18 at Humber College Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Registration for the latter conference will commence in late May. http://www.canscaip.org/Award Season is soon to be blossoming along with spring and summer. Recent announcements for shortlists include the 2014 Atlantic Book Awards and The Canadian Science Writers’ Association (CSWA).The shortlists for the Atlantic Book Awards are:Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s LiteratureNix Minus One, by Jill MacLean (Pajama Press)The Power of Harmony, by Jan L. Coates (Red Deer Press)The Stowaways, by Meghan Marentette, Illustrated by Dean Griffiths (Pajama Press)Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in IllustrationLasso the Wind: Aurélia’s Verses and Other Poems Illustrated by Susan Tooke and written by George Elliott Clarke (Nimbus Publishing)Pisim Finds her Miskanow Illustrated by Leonard Paul and written by William Dumas (Portage & Main Press)Singily Skipping Along, Illustrated by Deanne Fitzpatrick and written by Sheree Fitch (Nimbus Publishing)In addition two other children’s titles were also shortlisted:Ghost Boy of MacKenzie House by Patti Larsen (Acorn Press) for the Prince Edward Island Book Award (fiction category)Formac Publishing was nominated for the APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award (sponsored by Friesens Corporation), for Bluenose Adventure by Jacqueline Halsey with illustrations by Eric Orchard.http://atlanticbookawards.ca/ The shortlist for the Canadian Science Writers’ Association for outstanding youth book:Au labo, les Debrouillards! written by Yannick Bergeron (Bayard jeunesse)Before the World Was Ready written by Claire Eamer and illustrated by Sa Boothroyd (Annick Press)Buzz About Bees written by Kari-Lynn Winters (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)Dirty Science: 25 Experiments with Soil written by Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone, illustrated by Lorzeno Del Bianco (Scholastic Canada)A History of Just About Everything: 180 Events, People and Inventions That Changed the World written by Elizabeth MacLeod and Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Qin Leng (Kids Can Press)Pandemic Survival: It's Why You're Alive written by Ann Love and Jane Drake, illustrated by Bill Slavin (Tundra Books).http://sciencewriters.ca/2014/04/01/cswa-book-awards-shortlist-2/Gail de VosGail de Vos, an adjunct instructor, teaches courses on Canadian children's literature, Young Adult Literature and Comic Books and Graphic Novels at the School of Library and Information Studies for the University of Alberta and is the author of nine books on storytelling and folklore. She is a professional storyteller and has taught the storytelling course at SLIS for over two decades.


2020 ◽  
pp. 171-180
Author(s):  
Derritt Mason

This book’s conclusion reiterates the argument that queer YA is an anxious genre that perpetually rehearses a nervous uncertainty about its own constitution. Mason steps back to consider queer YA’s relationship to children’s literature more broadly, entering the discussion through a concept developed in Beverley Lyon Clark’s Kiddie Lit: the “anxiety of immaturity” that circulates around and within children’s literature and its criticism. Mason revisits the “Great YA Debate” of 2014, which followed a Slate piece by Ruth Graham entitled “Adults Should Be Embarrassed to Read Young Adult Books.” This debate included high profile pieces by Christopher Beha and A.O. Scott in The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, both of which evince a profound ambivalence about whether or not adults should be reading young adult literature. These conversations, Mason concludes, illustrate how young adult literature continues to be an unceasing source of adult anxiety.


Literator ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-82
Author(s):  
G. Wybenga

M.E.R. – 'The right to a place of honour' as the author of children’s books A recognition of M.E.R.’s writing developed late in her career. One of the reasons for this was most probably that she was almost exclusively involved in writing for children in the 1920s and early 1930s. Her many publications for children included not only “Kinders van die Voortrek” and the well-known “Karlien en Kandas”, but many more. It was only in the late 1940s after she had published books for adults that she received recognition for her work – which did not happen in the case of her earlier children’s books. Although she is at present regarded as a pioneer of children’s literature, these books have still not been accepted as part of the canon. This article attempts to indicate why she is considered a pioneer by situating her work in the literary context of the time. By analysing the individual books for children as texts in their own right, the article demonstates that dichotomising her work into literature for children and literature for adults is not justified. From the onset till the end of her career M.E.R.’s publications form one continuous oeuvre. The same trends observable in her early work for children are present in the later work for adults.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Kurtts ◽  
Karen W. Gavigan

The authors of this article examined how pre-service teachers can use children’s and young adult literature about disabilities to enhance understanding of individual differences through a bibliotherapeutic approach. An introduction to bibliotherapy is provided along with related literature from the field. Strategies for using children’s and young adult literature to enhance the understanding of issues associated with disabilities are presented along with one teacher candidate’s application of the literature in her classroom. The authors have also included a selected bibliography of children’s literature on disabilities as well as relevant websites.


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