Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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”Som om det aldri har skjedd”: Skjønnlitterært arbeid med verdien tilgivelse på 5.–7. trinn
No full text“As if it never happened”: Fictional Work with Forgiveness as a Value amongst 5th–7th Graders
This article examines how middle school pupils respond to an aesthetic approach to forgiveness as a value. We observed a group of pupils aged 10–12 while they were investigating and discussing Stian Hole’s picturebook Garmanns gate (Garmann’s Street, 2008) together with their teacher. We claim that Garmanns gate can be read as a story about forgiveness, and that it is also a picturebook that invites the reader to take a performative, aesthetic position; the reader is encouraged to pay attention to how the story is told as well as to the story itself (Ørjasæter, “Terskelposisjonen”). The focus of the article is to what extent investigating Garmanns gate will shed light on forgiveness, a value which is central in the Norwegian school’s purpose clause. We analysed their comments in the light of a definition that identifies different aspects of the concept of forgiveness. Our theoretical framework is Martha Nussbaum’s theory on the importance of narrative imagination in taking other peoples’ perspectives, and Louise Rosenblatt’s theory on aesthetic and efferent reading. We also refer to Maria Nikolajeva’s views on how the picturebook can promote emotional literacy. To deal with the concept of forgiveness, we use Paul Leer-Salvesen’s definition, which enables us to look at different aspects of the concept. These aspects together with “the emancipating consequences of forgiveness” are the categories we use in analysing our findings (Leer-Salvesen, Min skyld 96). We find that an aesthetic approach to Garmanns gate may provide an opportunity for a broader understanding of forgiveness, and we find that the teacher’s role is essential in guiding the pupils in the common aesthetic approach to the book, and in bringing forth reflections in the conversations
Kittys kartografi: Platser, artefakter och agens i fyra Kittyböcker
No full textNancy Drew’s Cartography: Places, Artifacts, and Agency in Four Nancy Drew Mysteries
Within children’s and young adult literature, movement between different places is often intricately linked to the agency of the characters. The Nancy Drew series is no exception, as it is characterized by a wide geographical area and a high level of mobility for the characters, who also have substantial agency. This article examines how places, geographies, cartographies, and spatial movements inform the plot in four Swedish translations of Nancy Drew mysteries where travel and place constitute a substantial part of the plot: Mystery of the Winged Lion (1982), and the 1992 trilogy comprising Swiss Secrets, Rendezvous in Rome, and Greek Odyssey. Informed by spatial literary theory, the analysis focuses on the aspects of place, artifacts closely linked to a specific place, and agency, respectively. The article shows that place, travel, and artifacts are central to the mysteries, which depend on touristic, well-known sites, and on the transformations which occur when these sites become potentially dangerous. At the core of the mysteries, we encounter iconic, at times historic artifacts that sometimes situate the detective series in a realm of history. At times these artifacts even direct the story, and can thus be seen as to some extent agentic. Finally, the travelogue-informed genre, with its ties to the historic (predominantly male) Grand Tour, creates new possibilities for character development and reflection in the detective series
Girlhood, Gazing, and Fatness: Towards a Joining of Fat Studies and Girlhood Studies through Gabriella Sköldenberg’s Young Adult Novel Trettonde sommaren
No full textHow can the fields of fat studies and girlhood studies inform each other in literary analysis? In this article, we analyse how being a girl means negotiating fat using the Swedish young adult novel Trettonde sommaren (Thirteenth Summer, 2018) by Gabriella Sköldenberg as an example. In the novel, surveillance of the teenage girl’s body weight – which can be seen as a manifestation of fat haunting – is introduced by the mothers of two cousins, Angelica and Sandra, during a summer stay at their grandfather’s home in the countryside. Although the two girls are not described as fat, thin normativity becomes a key issue in the narrative through their mothers’ supervision. This leads to the confrontation with and death of another character who is perceived as fat by the girls and their mothers: the friendly and motherly Rut. The interplay between different gazes is at the core of our analysis and helps us explore how discourses of girlhood and fatness intertwine in the novel. We show how Angelica moves from being influenced by the mothers’ and Sandra’s thin normative gaze, to adopting an oppositional girl gaze which encompasses what we refer to as a fat gaze, a gaze that looks with the fat character rather than at her. Our analysis of gazes demonstrates the benefit of a combined focus on girlhood and fatness in approaching the novel. From a broader perspective, it also shows how the fields of fat studies and girlhood studies can enrich each other and together offer answers to how body size is experienced and conceptualised in relation to girlhood in young adult fiction
Elina Druker, Björn Sundmark, Åsa Warnqvist och Mia Österlund (red.), Silence and Silencing in Children's Literature
No full textReview/Recensio
Sisters, Bosom Chums, and Enemies: How Secondary Female Characters Subvert the Girls’ Bildungsromane
No full textThis article explores the functions of secondary girl characters in English-language American and Canadian girls’ Bildungsromane. Previously, we have explored girls’ literature as a distinct genre, framed in the theory of genre as social action, and our past scholarship examines the ways in which pre-WWII girls’ Bildungsroman stories emphasize girls’ eventual integration into their communities. Rather than having adventures, as in boys’ coming-of-age texts, we have noted ways in which the main girl characters grow “down” into social restrictions, usually as (potential) wives and mothers. Secondary female characters in these girls’ stories are compared, contrasted, or conflated with their close peers as they grow to womanhood, whether they function as the protagonists' “bosom friend,” a rival or “frenemy,” a sibling, or a classmate. However, without the same coming-of-age expectations of a text’s or series’ heroine, these secondary female characters often demonstrate alternate paths to womanhood, highlighting diversities or serving as a warning to the girl protagonists on their journeys
Nina Christensen & Charlotte Appel, Children's Literature in the Nordic World
No full textReview/Recensio
Empowering or Responsibilising? : A Critical Content Analysis of Contemporary Biographies about Women
No full textThis article contributes to the limited body of work attending to girlhood in children’s nonfiction, with specific focus on collective biographies about women published since 2016. In recent years, children’s nonfiction books about women have proliferated rapidly in the United Kingdom and beyond. This proliferation has coincided with an intensification of academic and public interest in young people’s engagement with feminist ideas, where female empowerment is often marketed as a commodity. The biographies often present narratives of “empowered” women, and the implication of their framing is that readers will consume the texts and be inspired to achieve empowerment as well. Such discourses of empowerment are conducive to neoliberal subjectivities, where the self is regarded as autonomous, self-reliant, and responsible. This article offers a critical content analysis of Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women (2016), Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 (2017), and three of Kate Pankhurst’s Fantastically Great Women books (2016–2020). My analysis is framed by poststructuralist feminist theories and popular feminism as theorised by Sarah Banet-Weiser. I suggest that, despite the important and admirable intentions underlying their publication, the overarching discourses of girlhood that these texts present are problematic. Specifically, whilst female representation is important, there are undertones that render women and girls individually responsible for themselves, especially for their aspirations and successes. As readers are inspired to take responsibility for their lives, other factors that produce and maintain their unequal status in the first place are eschewed
Meghan Gilbert-Hickey & Miranda A. Green-Barteet (red.), Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction
No full textReview/Recensio
The Self-Possessed Girl in Golden Age Girls’ Books
No full textThis article explores the meanings of girls’ silence in three popular late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century novels: Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did (1872), Johanna Spyri’s Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre (Heidi, 1880), and L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908). These three classics of girls’ fiction are international bestsellers; all three novels are available in Nordic languages as well as their original English or German. Often read as taming narratives in which wild girls are forcibly shaped into compliant young women, these texts allow us to see how the girls’ book has struggled with conformity and agency since its beginnings. As influential early girls’ books, these novels help us disentangle the patterns early examples of the genre offer us as twenty-first-century readers and critics. Though a girl’s silence can indicate trauma and social repression (as we see in What Katy Did and Heidi), withholding speech can be a voluntary decision that girls make for themselves (as in Anne of Green Gables). In this article, we draw on disability theory to propose a model for thinking about the distinction between silence and silencing. While silence can be a form of repression, paralyzing the thoughts as physical injury paralyzes the body, it is also linked to prayer and the concept of self-possession. Silence is not always a marker of the loss of voice or physical autonomy; by appealing to the idea of self-possession, we can move beyond a dichotomy of speech as positive and silence as negative
Läsarengagemang, bildtolkning och identifikation: Barns brev till tidskriften Jultomten
No full textReader Engagement, Interpretation, and Identification: Children’s Letters to the Christmas Annual Jultomten
The article examines a selection of children’s letters sent to the editor of the Swedish annual Christmas publication Jultomten (Father Christmas) during three years at the turn of the century 1900. The aim is to show how children responded to the editor’s invitation to write letters to the journal, how the children commented on some of the images, and how their appreciation and involvement were articulated in terms of reader engagement, interpretation, and identification. For this purpose, the letters were analyzed with the help of visual literacy theories and methods, which focus on primary school children’s picture (and picturebook) reception. The results show that the children’s response to the chosen images varies according to their level of involvement and degree of visual literacy competence