The depiction of war in literature for children. An approach to the topic

Last great-armed conflicts resulted in literary reactions, and after World War ii it was a huge production of children’s literature in order to approach the issue to young readers and help them to understand what happened. It can be considered the prelude of the recent politicization and introduction of different conflicts that children’s literature is nowadays experiencing. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Judith Kerr 1971), Carrie’s War (Nina Bawden 1973) and Good Night Mister Tom (Michelle Magorian 1981) are part of these post-war publications and through their analysis, it is aimed to study how the historical circumstances of the World War II are approached to children. Addressing how their authors represent the conflict, the separation and the family relations that play a crucial role on these works and children literature in general. Analyzing how society of the time is portrayed trough different motifs as the journey, the female figures or the war itself. The techniques they use and how do they overcome a common conflict of displacement, what can help young readers to learn strategies to face their own problems in real life.

The Power of 'Wonder' by R. J. Palacio to Trigger Young Readers’ Emotionally Literate Responses

Readers’ emotions are naturally blended with their cognitive abilities in the transaction with literary texts. From the perspective of emotional intelligence, an emotionally literate reader will be able to read beyond the surface of the text and make inferences regarding shades of feelings, their causes and effects. The purpose of the present study was to observe whether there is any correlation between the emotional intelligence profile of young readers and their abilities to identify the emotional input in literary texts and its impact on themselves. The study was carried out with the participation of 72 students in the first year at the Faculty of Letters in Iași. It consisted in three stages and relied both on quantitative and qualitative data collection. In the first stage, the students filled in a Reading literary texts – Self-report questionnaire; in the second stage they filled in the How Empathetic are You? (The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire, TEQ) (“How Empathetic”) and in the third stage they were given excerpts from the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio in order to check whether the self-reported emotional literacy skills were at work when approaching a literary text. Approximately half of the students (30) offered to watch the film prior to class discussion and work. The answers were compared with the results of the self-reported questionnaires and a natural and fairly consistent correspondence between the profiles of readers in terms of empathy in general and the empathy felt with regard to the fictional characters together with a good command of emotion vocabulary could be observed.

New Futures, same old Fear: Gender-based Violence and Victim Coping in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

The ability of dystopian fiction to offer critical views of futures riddled with the devastating consequences of today’s failures is pervasive also in its literary subgenre targeting young readers. While scholarship on these novels is extensive, the prevalence of sexual assaults in this subgenre requires attention. This study offers an introductory analysis of two contemporary young adult dystopian trilogies, Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2011-2013) and Beth Revis’ Across the Universe (2011-2013), with a focus on the sexual assaults the protagonists endure. The discussion draws on trauma and sexual abuse research to ascertain how and if these future societies and heroines challenge traditional representations of this crime.

Moral values in Sarah Fielding's novel “The Governess, or the Little Female Academy”

This article deals with the moral values and social issues described in the school story of the famous English writer Sarah Fielding “The Governess, or the Little Female Academy”, which is considered one of notable works written specifically for children in the Age of Enlightenment. The article examines some of the components of the genre “School Story” – the traditional opening and description of the daily routine of an educational institution for girls, plot twists, certain characters, etc. At the same time, following Sarah Fielding’s ideas, the author scrutinises the issue of children's reading and the need to discuss its content with adults. Using the examples of the wards' stories about their life before school, the problem of interpersonal relations of characters is analysed – within a family, with parents, brothers and sisters, other relatives, governesses and servants; whereas outside it, with representatives of various social groups. Much attention is paid to the depiction of behaviour etiquette and constant striving for perfection, as well as control over various emotions. As a result of the study, it is concluded that school stories are useful for young readers due to their topicality and positive general attitude, which allows adolescents to overcome numerous life difficulties during the formation and development of their personalities.

Loyalty and Javanese Women in Indonesian Folktales for Children

This study analyses the representation of the loyalty of Javanese women in Indonesian folktales for children. We apply a textual analysis from the perspective of feminism and some elements of the literary sociology approach to the analysis of four Indonesian folktales. We conclude that in Indonesian folktales Javanese women are obliged to be loyal to rulers and institutions – which are functionally one and the same. Javanese women who display loyalty often earn symbolic and other benefits, while those who are disloyal or defiant meet a tragic end. The voices of women are not conveyed by the authors of the analysed texts. Therefore, Indonesian folktales impress upon young readers, particularly children, the notion that loyalty to the state and authorities is of paramount importance.

The Past Contains a Promise of Regeneration: Narratives of Ireland’s Future in Early-Twentieth-Century Juvenile Periodicals

This article investigates the popular periodicals for juveniles Our Boys, Fianna, Young Ireland, and St. Enda’s, which were cherished by Irish nationalists as home-grown substitutes for the alienating British story papers in the Ireland of the early twentieth century. With Ireland still under British rule, these periodicals were concerned about the role of youths in the context of nation-building and my contention is that the people involved in such editorial enterprises viewed them as potentially transformative forces of society, which not only harnessed the power of the idea of political upheaval, but also forged the agents who were to build the envisioned free Irelands. Contributing to the definition of an appropriate ‘post-independence’ national identity, they thus offered to the young visions of the future nation that predicated its legitimacy upon an appeal to the past and the appreciation of traditions. At the same time, young readers were presented with exemplary models of Irish citizenship drawn from Irish heritage of myths and histories. Hence, through the close scrutiny of primary texts from the crucial 1914–23 years, my objective is to show how the future Irelands first imagined and narrated in the periodicals would find their roots in the past and draw energies and strength from the nation’s cultural heritage.

Ungdomens poetiska form

The Poetic Form of Youth: The Rebellious Power of Language and Desire in the Anthologies Kärlek och uppror and Berör och förstör Siv Widerberg and Anna Artén’s poetry anthology Kärlek och uppror: 210 dikter för unga människor (Love and Rebellion: 210 Poems for Young People, 1989) is something of a classic when it comes to Swedish contemporary poetry explicitly addressing young readers. Thirty years after its publication another poetry anthology, Berör och förstör: Dikter för unga (Affect and Destroy: Poems for Youth, 2019), edited by Athena Farrokhzad and Kristofer Folkhammar, was published. Both books tap into a long tradition of lyrical anthologies. Neither of the anthologies contain poetry written primarily for young readers. On the contrary, the anthologies include poems from the Swedish lyrical canon. Although the two anthologies share a similar structure and joint themes such as youth, love, poetry, and rebellion, they are significantly different in regard to poetic form and the conceptualizations of youth. The main theoretical perspective in this study is that the form of the anthologized poems can be understood as ideological expressions of an interplay between the genre's tradition and its specific aesthetic context. By historizing the genre and comparing the different paratexts of the anthologies, the article shows that adult conceptions of youth hides behind the editorial choices. In a quest to (re)create new writing subjects, through the rebellious powers of poetic language and love, the symbolic form of youth poetry both challenges and negates adult notions of youth in the two anthologies.

Beyond Boundaries. Authorship and Readership in Life Writing: Introduction

On 24 and 25 October 2019, a conference on life writing for young readers took place at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. This conference was organised by Helma van Lierop, Jane McVeigh and Monica Soeting. The main issue of the conference was that of boundaries with respect to authorship and readership in life writing.