Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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Sonja Svensson, Barnavänner och skolkamrater: Svenska barn- och ungdomstidningar 1766–1900 sedda mot en internationell bakgrund
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Radical Children’s Literature for Adults and The Inner City Mother Goose
No full textThis article explores the radical possibilities of children’s literature for adults, using as a case study The Inner City Mother Goose, a book of poetry for adults written by Eve Merriam and published, with “visuals” by Lawrence Ratzkin, in 1969. As one of the most frequently banned books of the 1970s, a period in which children’s literature and childhood itself saw dramatic changes, The Inner City Mother Goose is a good representative of the children’s book for adults, suggesting the ways in which parody, satire, and formal conventions of genres typically associated with children’s reading (nursery rhymes, abecedaries, board books, picture books, etc.) can function as aesthetic and formal cues that call the boundaries of adulthood and childhood into question to humorous but also, at times, politically radical effect. In the slippage between audiences, especially as children mischievously embrace texts that invite young people in while implicitly or explicitly excluding them, children not only gain access to ostensibly forbidden knowledge but also gain insight into adult hypocrisy. Most importantly, they gain an incentive to act independently and autonomously so as to eliminate contradictions between the “truths” and values they have been taught and those they have discovered by reading a children’s book that was ostensibly not intended for children
Visual and Verbal Self-Referentiality in Russian Avant-Garde Picturebooks
No full textThe early Soviet picturebook arose in an age of propaganda that conceived of children’s literature as a “forgotten weapon” in the battle to train a new populace to inhabit the new post-revolutionary world. For this reason, one can detect a variety of rhetorical aims in early Soviet picturebooks. This article examines visual and verbal self-referentiality in Russian avant-garde picturebooks along aesthetic, educational, and political axes, focusing first on avant-garde self-referentiality evident in works by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Daniil Kharms that typify the avant-garde movement and then turning to picturebook self-referentiality exemplified in works by Samuil Marshak and Ilya Ionov, which reflect increasing consciousness of the picturebook as genre. It argues that avant-garde self-referentiality must be considered within a broader avant-garde context, while the peculiarities of picturebook self-referentiality in this period illustrate the establishment of the early Soviet picturebook as a new branch of culture, as well as material conditions, cultural shifts, and power consolidation after the revolution. Early Soviet picturebooks employ the child reader in building a vision of the future, although the nature of that world and of the child fit to be its citizen diverges widely, showing how this time period represented a significant aesthetic and political crossroads
Bertolt Brecht’s Radical Contribution to Pacifist Children’s Lyrics in Interwar Germany: “Die drei Soldaten” (The Three Soldiers) and “Kinderkreuzzug 1939” (Children’s Crusade 1939)
No full textThis paper focuses on German poetry for children published during the interwar period and written by left-wing authors such as Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Friedrich, and Edwin Hoernle. Their poems propagated socialist and communist ideals, in line with antifascist and anti-imperialist views that call for class struggle as well as fighting against fascist ideology. Moreover, many poems supported pacifistic ideas which turned against the glorification of war. In this regard, Bertolt Brecht played a significant role. His poems “Die drei Soldaten: Ein Kinderbuch” (The three soldiers: A children’s book), with illustrations by George Grosz, and “Kinderkreuzzug 1939” (Children’s crusade 1939) present prime examples of radical publishing and aesthetics in the interwar period, since they express a sharp critique of the destructive power of war and its effect on afterwar society
A Manifesto for Radical Children’s Literature (and an Argument Against Radical Aesthetics)
No full textIn The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks (2002), I took for granted that an avant-garde for children was both possible and critically viable. More recently (in “Surrealism for Children: Paradoxes and Possibilities,” 2015), I questioned what I had taken for granted. In this manifesto, I veer further away from the notion that there is a usefully definable radical aesthetic for children’s literature – and yet also argue for that very thing whose formal features resist codifying. This is both a manifesto for radical children’s literature and a record of my failure to locate a politically radical aesthetic. Taking (mostly contemporary) picture books as its primary focus, this paper considers the wide range of aesthetic choices that can be directed toward radical ends. Arguing for radical children’s literature but refusing to codify its aesthetics may seem paradoxical. But I encourage us to embrace this very paradox, to resist enshrining radicalness within a set of aesthetic principles, so that we may instead be agile improvisers, unleashing the power of our fugitive imaginations, as we advocate for books that inspire the next generation to build a more just world
Anita Tarr and Donna R. White (red.), Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World
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Helene Ehriander & Maria Nilson (red.), Humanetten 39/2017: Linnéuniversitetets sommarkurser 10 år. Jubileumsnummer
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Ett stort varuhus i en stor stad: Dagdrömmar och konsumtionskritik i barnlitteraturen
No full textTitle: A Big Department Store in a Big City. Daydreams and Consumer Criticism in Children’s LiteratureIn advertising, marketing, and product catalogs from the first decades of the 20th century, the newly launched department stores often describe their toy departments as a ”fairy tale world”, ”children’s paradise” or ”toy land”. They are depicted as spaces for play and enjoyment, but above all, as spaces for daydreams. These expressions and images – loaded with messages and ideals about children, consumption, and modernity – were quickly transferred to children’s literature. Based on research from advertising history as well as modernism and modernity studies, the article discusses how the department store in the mid-1900s becomes a new variant of the Schlaraffenland or the Cockaigne motif in Scandinavian children’s literature. Focusing on stories published between 1933 and 1965, depictions of children as consumers and the child’s interaction with the department store and its products are investigated. In the studied stories, different variations of the Schlaraffenland motif – excess of toys, experiences, and food – are used to playfully depict hildren’s encounters with the commodity world, but also to investigate questions about the individual’s responsibilities as a consumer and ideas about individuality, freedom, and modernity
