Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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Nature Unnested: Kin and Kind in Switched Egg Children’s Stories
No full textIn Hans Christian Andersen’s iconic fairy tale, Den grimme ælling (The Ugly Duckling, 1843), we learn that “it does not matter that one has been born in the henyard as long as one has lain in a swan’s egg.” Claims to supremacy, worth, and belonging are nested in a children’s story about “nature” and bolstered by biological notions of kin and kind – some eggs are naturally better than others. Since Andersen’s nineteenth-century tale, the lost/found/switched egg narrative has become a trope in children’s literature, particularly in stories that explore themes of family and belonging, and yet little scholarly attention has been given to the egg in this regard. Drawing on queer, feminist, and posthumanist frameworks inspired by Donna Haraway’s natureculture thinking, this article examines the deployment of the egg-switch trope in Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling, in relation to two contemporary picturebooks, And Tango Makes Three (Parnell and Richardson, 2005), and The Odd Egg (Gravett, 2008). I treat the material-symbolic presence of the egg in these texts as a generative site for interrogating the construction and perpetuation of dominant notions of kin and kind, considering the complex and slippery ways that nature is called upon to uphold ideas of exceptionalism and normativity through discourses of origin and species. At the same time, acknowledging the concurrent conservative and radical potentialities of literature for children (Jaques), and guided by Rosi Braidotti’s affirmative ethics and Eve Sedgwick’s queer reparative approaches to criticism, I also read these texts as imaginative sites for noticing and theorizing alternative queer models of relationality that elevate chosen, non-biological, and cross-species kin
Diversifying Understandings of Diversity: Possible Routes for Nordic Children’s Literature
No full textThis is a position paper by the guest editors of the Barnboken theme “Diversity in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature” in which we propose that theorising and promoting diversity in the Nordic context would benefit from a broadening of the approaches that dominate the British and American contexts. We attempt to tone down the confrontational style of discussion by outlining the value of two non-political approaches to diversity: cognitive and imagological studies. The former highlights the neurological basis underpinning the desire to compare and the reliance on visual information in producing categories; the latter maps the ways in which images of nations are circulated. We then show how these approaches can dovetail with more politically motivated approaches – such as intersectionality – to produce a pedagogy of diversity. We do not claim that these are the only possible routes, and invite other scholars to diversify further. Our argument is that pitching the need for diverse children’s books solely on moral and ethical grounds has not had the pedagogical impact needed. We need to diversify approaches to analysing and promoting diverse literatures
Heidi Hansson, Maria Lindgren Leavenworth & Anka Ryall (red.), The Arctic in Literature for Children and Young Adults
No full textReview/Recensio
Hannah Field, Playing With the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader
No full textReview/Recensio
Petra Bäni Rigler, Bilderbuch - Lesebuch - Künstlerbuch: Elsa Beskows Ästhetik des Materiellen
No full textReview/Recensio
Stephen M. Zimmerly, The Sidekick Comes of Age: How Young Adult Literature is Shifting the Sidekick Paradigm: How Young Adult Literature is Shifting the Sidekick Paradigm
No full textReview/Recensio
Review essay/Samlingsrecension: Astrid och jag: 50 års arbetsliv 1952–2002 och En utmärkt författare: Astrid Lindgrens belöningar och utmärkelser
No full textReview essay/Samlingsrecensio
Secrets, Stealth, and Survival : The Silent Child in the Video Games Little Nightmares and INSIDE
No full textThis article combines critical theory from children’s literature studies with research methods from games studies to explore the connection between silence and childhood in two digital texts. Little Nightmares (2017) and INSIDE (2016) are wordless video games that feature nameless, faceless children as their avatars. Weak and weaponless, the children must avoid detection and stay silent if they are to survive. By slinking and skulking, crouching and cowering, the children navigate their way through vast, brutal adult environments in order to reach safety – or so the player thinks. Both games, in fact, end in shocking, unexpected ways, prompting the disturbing realisation that silent children have secrets of their own. The games use scale, perspective, and sound to encourage close identification between the player and avatar, and position the silent, blank-faced child as a cipher onto which the player can project their own feelings of fear, dread, and vulnerability. The child-character’s quiet compliance with the player’s commands also situates the player as an anxious parent, orbiting, assisting, and protecting a dependent child as it moves through a dangerous world. For both subject positions, the child-character’s silence closes the distance between the player and avatar. However, when it is revealed that the child-characters have hidden, unknowable, and potentially sinister motivations, the meaning of their silence is wholly transformed. Using aetonormative theory (Nikolajeva; Beauvais; Gubar) in conjunction with studies of ideologies surrounding childhood (Jenks; Kincaid; Meyer; Balanzategui; Stockton; Lury), this article examines the extent to which these digital texts affirm or subvert cultural constructions of “the Child.” It employs a close reading approach proposed by games scholar Diane Carr to argue that the player-avatar relationships in these games shed new light on some of the fundamental contradictions that characterise adult normativity and child alterity, and concludes by suggesting some ways in which video games might productively expand and disrupt conceptions of aetonormative power relations
“It felt better to stay quiet”: Miming as a Non-Verbal Way of Coping with Trauma in Kathy Kacer’s Masters of Silence (2019)
No full textThis article analyzes Kathy Kacer’s Masters of Silence (2019), a novel about Marcel Marceau – the renowned mime artist who during the war cooperated with the French Resistance – and two fictional Jewish siblings struggling with the trauma of losing their parents, anti-Semitism, and the suppression of identity in a Catholic convent in southern France. The author examines the narrative techniques used by Kacer, including the combination of fiction with history and some elements of the biography of Marceau, and demonstrates that she not only shares the next-generation memory of World War II with her young readers but also depicts nonverbal ways of coping with trauma as potentially effective and empowering. Whereas Kacer’s indifference to historical dates may be connected to her determination to portray Marceau as an adolescent role model, the novel is a successful narrative about trauma and the Holocaust history, and the depiction of Marceau’s acts of resistance does not overshadow the young protagonists who do not just quiver and follow the instructions of the adults but mainly try to gain agency.