Jeunesse - Young People, Texts, Cultures (E-Journal)
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The Haunted Dollhouses of Diana Thorneycroft
Get PDFThis article examines Diana Thorneycroft’s alternately playful, ambivalent and critical engagement with contemporary English-Canadian cultural nationalism through a close reading of her 2010 series titled A People’s History. More specifically, it explores how this series represents the latest result of a series of formal experimentations with dolls, the diorama, visual humour and quotations of commodity culture. In bringing together all of these disparate elements, Thorneycroft lures us into the dark side of Canadian national memory, forcing us to accept that sexual predation and colonial violence are also “part of our heritage”.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.000
Disturbing Thoughts: Representations of Compassion in Two Picture Books Entitled The Island
Get PDFTwo picture books titled The Island, one written and illustrated by Armin Greder and the other written by John Heffernan and illustrated by Peter Sheehan, address the treatment of refugees in Australia and function as an allegory for any situation in which a community mistreats an outsider. Readers bear witness to unethical behaviour by a group that is offset by the compassionate actions of an individual. The books differ in the means by which they position readers to evaluate individual actions, while inviting a similar response: that compassion is a necessary aspect of social justice and human (and creature) flourishing.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.001
Companionable Voices
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Grenby, M. O., and Andrea Immel, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.000
“Where Happily Ever After Happens Every Day”: Disney’s Official Princess Website and the Commodification of Play
Get PDFThis article interrogates Disney’s web presence as manifested in its official Princess website, http://disney.go.com/princess, arguing that this new media platform is one way that Disney commodifies play. While the site is only one part of a complex web of texts that forms Disney Princess, it serves a crucial cultural function. As a legitimate Disney site, it has an aura of authenticity; as a site with a dual implied audience of young children and their parents, it is a key way to shape consumers and track online habits. This article argues that despite a persistent emphasis on individual choice, this site works to control and regulate play, substituting Disney-inflected notions of “specialness” for actual user agency.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.001
The Idea of North in Canadian Children’s Literature Today
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Bastedo, Jamie. Sila’s Revenge. Toronto: Red Deer, 2010.
Bastedo, Jamie. On Thin Ice. Toronto: Red Deer, 2006.
Bedesky, Baron. Peary and Henson: The Race to the North Pole. St. Catharines: Crabtree, 2006.Bell, Joanne. Juggling Fire. Victoria: Orca, 2009.
Chartier, Daniel. Norđur. Illus. Ólöf Gerour Sigfúsdóttir. Montreal: P de l’U du Québec, 2009.
Crawford, Laura. In Arctic Waters. Illus. Ben Hodson. Mount Pleasant: Sylvan Dell, 2007.
Guiberson, Brenda Z. Life in the Boreal Forest. Illus. Gennady Spirin. Toronto: Groundwood, 2009.
Harrison, Ted. A Northern Alphabet. Toronto: Tundra, 2009.
Hodge, Deborah. Who Lives Here? Polar Animals. Illus. Pat Stephens. Toronto: Kids Can, 2008.
Jocelyn, Marthe. Ready for Winter. Toronto: Tundra, 2008.
Kusugak, Michael. The Littlest Sled Dog. Illus. Vladyana Krykorka. Victoria: Orca, 2008.
Pasquet, Jacques. Mon île blessée. Illus. Marion Arbona. Montreal: Isatis, 2009.
Polak, Monique. The Middle of Everywhere. Victoria: Orca, 2009.
Rivera, Raquel. Tuk and the Whale. Toronto: Groundwood, 2008.
Service, Robert. The Cremation of Sam McGee. Illus. Ted Harrison. Toronto: Kids Can, 2006.
Teevee, Ningeokuluk. Alego. Toronto: Groundwood, 2009.
Wallace, Mary. I is for Inuksuk: An Arctic Celebration. Toronto: Maple Tree, 2009.
Zeman-Spaleny, Linda. Lord of the Sky. Illus. Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Tundra, 2009.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.000
Too Good to Be True: The Fall of the Ideal Youth, from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Get PDFWithin half a century of the publication of G. Stanley Hall’s Adolescence, the qualities of ideal and dangerous adolescents flip: ideal adolescents actually behave in a disturbed fashion, while seemingly well-adjusted youth are understood to be courting danger later in life. A comparison of seemingly ideal characters in adolescent novels from two periods—the first decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first—helps to illuminate how and why these desires and fears for youth shift. In Kate Douglas Wiggin’s 1903 novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Rebecca represents the ideal youth common before Hall’s publication and the subsequent spread of anxiety about the psychological health of adolescents. Ann Brashares’s The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequels, published from 2001 to 2007, reflect a distinct change in thinking, given the books’ focus on a potentially ideal teen, Bridget, who is undermined and written off as too good to be truly authentic. In these examples, it is not only apparent that the conception of the ideal shifts, but it is also evident that the “squeaky-clean” ideal adolescents are in fact the ones who are less controllable and more dangerous to the existing social order.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.001
“Je suis fatigué par le culte de la jeunesse”: Or, Walking on Ice in High Heels
Get PDFDOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.000