Jeunesse - Young People, Texts, Cultures (E-Journal)
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The Trouble with Magic: Conjuring the Past in New York City Parks
No full textNew York City parks serve as magical sites of discovery and recovery in speculative fiction for young readers, which has gone through a process of modernization, shifting from “universal” and “generic” narratives with repetitive features (derived from Western European folklore) to a sort of “specialization” that emphasizes the particular cultural practices and histories of racially diverse urban populations. Ruth Chew uses city spaces like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Prospect Park to engage young readers in the magical adventures of white, middle-class children. Zetta Elliott’s African American speculative novels A Wish After Midnight and Ship of Souls utilize these sites to reveal the complexity and ethnic diversity of urban youth while conjuring the suppressed history of free and enslaved blacks in New York City.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.001
Follow the Money: Implicit Messages in Children’s Texts on Activism
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Milway, Katie Smith. Mimi’s Village and How Basic Health Care Transformed It. Illus. Eugenie Fernandes. Toronto: Kids, 2012.
Newhouse, Maxwell. The Weber Street Wonder Work Crew. Toronto: Tundra, 2010.
Wilson, Janet. Our Earth: How Kids Are Saving the Planet. Toronto: Second Story, 2010.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.001
The Disappearing Childhood of Children's Literature Studies
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Grenby, M. O., and Kimberley Reynolds. Children’s Literature Studies: A Research Handbook. Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2011.
Mickenberg, Julia, and Lynne Vallone, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 2011.
Nel, Philip, and Lissa Paul, eds. Keywords for Children’s Literature. New York: New York UP, 2011.
Rudd, David, ed. The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature. London: Routledge, 2010.
Wolf, Shelby A., Karen Coats, Patricia Enciso, and Christine A. Jenkins, eds. Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. New York: Routledge, 2011.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.000
Oh, Golly, What a Happy Family! Trajectories of Citizenship and Agency in Three Twentieth-Century Book Series for Children
No full textThis article explores three British picture-book series that were created out of children’s playthings: Florence and Bertha Upton’s Dutch Doll and Golliwogg series, Enid Blyton’s Noddy series, and Allan Ahlberg’s Happy Families series. These series span the twentieth century, giving snapshots of politically and culturally charged intersections between childhood and citizenship. Considered together, they highlight a narrowing in scope of agency from notions of global citizenship early in the century to local, community-based citizenship rooted in village authority, economic ties, and fiscal responsibility at mid-century to citizenship based on familial interests and the social family unit at the end of the century.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.000
Rethinking Adaptation: Intersections of Children’s Literature and Studies of Transformation
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Lefebvre, Benjamin, ed. Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature: Adaptations, Translations, Reconsiderations. New York: Routledge, 2013.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.000
Cultural Preservation and Metropolitan Transformation: Folk-Tale Traditions and The Queen of Paradise’s Garden, a Newfoundland Jack Tale
No full textThe Queen of Paradise’s Garden, adapted by Andy Jones and illustrated by Darka Erdelji, is a picture-book version of a Newfoundland Jack tale. The movement of the tale through a variety of forms—from oral tale to print transcription to puppet play to picture book—and its role as a cultural artifact echo the complexities of folk-tale transmission and transformation globally and historically. This article examines the ways in which the picture book and its antecedent versions are both of Newfoundland and of a larger and ongoing history of folk tales.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.002
Unpleasant Consequences: First Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and Gilmore Girls
No full textWhile many contemporary television series offer young female protagonists agency in terms of physical, social, economic, and intellectual power, they often fail to pursue this progressive ideology in terms of these young women’s sexuality. This article explores a cultural fascination with teenage girls as sexual (or asexual) subjects, particularly with their virginity, and the negative effects of that fascination in the experiences of first sex of teen protagonists in the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and Gilmore Girls.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.000
Charlotte Sometimes de Penelope Farmer, entre Histoire nationale et histoire individuelle, identité collective et identité personnelle
No full textLes romans pour la jeunesse qui abordent les conflits mondiaux ont connu un essor important en Grande-Bretagne dans la seconde partie du vingtième siècle, notamment à partir des années 1960. Cette vague de récits évoquant, souvent de façon oblique, les problématiques liées à la guerre donnait une fois de plus la preuve, s’il en était besoin, de la persistance d’une mission éducative de la littérature adressée aux jeunes lecteurs, malgré l’affranchissement apparent que ces livres connaissaient progressivement de la dimension édifiante les caractérisant précédemment. À travers une étude de cas, celle du roman Charlotte Sometimes de Penelope Farmer, nous entendons nous pencher sur la démarche de tout un courant de romans pour la jeunesse, qui non seulement présentent au jeune lecteur la guerre d’un point de vue mineur mais font également le choix d’un traitement non réaliste de l’Histoire.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.001
Figuring Transition: Play, Performance, and Mimicry in Children’s Books by Thomas King, Mordecai Richler, and Margaret Atwood
No full textIn Thomas King’s A Coyote Solstice Tale, Mordecai Richler’s Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, and Margaret Atwood’s Wandering Wenda and the Widow Wallop’s Wunderground Washery, the mimicry of the transitional characters is a platform for their satire. Mimicry is a neutral practice in and of itself and can be advocated as a model behaviour: the dictum to become the change one wants to see in the world suggests that, by imitating a not-yet-actual ideal, one can make that fiction reality. For Child, The Hooded Fang, and the Wizard/Widow, mimicry also dramatizes the intolerability of worlds that manipulate interpellative processes to reify power. The transitional figures in these three books work as models of the half-playful and half-perverse clinging to a way of life that pertains to a particular fictional world they endorse, reinforcing childhood as a desirable, dynamic, and powerful transitional state.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.001
Sufi Mysticism and Dreams in Nabil Ayouch’s Ali Zaoua, Prince of the Streets
No full textThis article examines the poetics of childhood in Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s Ali Zaoua, Prince of the Streets, focusing on dream culture, sea travel, and elements of Sufi mysticism. In Ali Zaoua, symbols such as eyes, a compass, Twin Towers, sea travel, and an imaginary island with two suns visualize an Islamic dream culture. Ayouch presents the cruelty of life on the streets marked by violence, filth, and concrete, yet the film celebrates a dream culture by focusing on fantasy, images of a spiritual voyage, poetry, and Sufi mysticism, which eclipse the harsh, socially realistic portrayal of the lives of homeless children.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2013.001