Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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Malin Alkestrand, Magiska möjligheter: Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl och Cirkeln i skolans värdegrundsarbete
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Maria Andersson och Elina Druker (red.), Mångkulturell barn- och ungdomslitteratur: Analyser
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Unga läsare som litteraturkritiker online: En (skol)genre på rymmen?
No full textTitle: Young Readers as Literary Critics Online: A (School) Genre on the Run? Research has shown that the book review is part of a core of school text repertoire, and that it is characterized by particular blocks of information. Young readers also write book reviews outside the school context and post these texts online. This study focuses 50 book reviews in Swedish, written by readers age 9–20 outside the school context and posted online. The blocks of information have been mapped, showing that the plot, the characters and the evaluation are predominant among these young readers. However, in the reviews readers are often addressed directly, and the reviewer uses the affinity space provided by the digital environment, both to establish interaction with the readers and to position the young reader as an engaged and competent critic. The established genre conventions are observed to varying degrees, in particular the use of terminology with a bearing on narratives. Paratextual elements such as photos of book covers, quotes, links and spoiler warnings occur in many book reviews in the material. Three theoretical concepts are used in this article to analyse and understand young readers’ online book reviews: James Paul Gee’s concept of affinity space, Basil Bernstein’s concept of horizontal and vertical discourse, and Gérard Genette’s concept of paratext. The result shows that the book review may still, in essence, be an imitation genre, as the young readers use the blocks of information common to the genre conventions learnt at school or by reading professional reviews. The digital environment has, however, had an impact. Not only does Internet provide an arena for the young readers to act as critics, it also provides the young reviewer with national and international models, possibilities of interaction, and paratextual material to borrow. The young readers have capitalized on the possibility to position themselves as readers and critics
Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes: The Body Switch in the Engelsfors Trilogy
No full textIn the second book in the Swedish fantasy series about the town Engelsfors, Fire (2013), a dysfunctional group of witches is forced to unite and work together in order to hide that they have switched bodies with each other. This version of the body-switching motif is different from the more common body switch between two characters in that five people who are all focalised throughout the experience take part in it. The body switch is closely tied to a learning process about the need for cooperation and understanding for other people’s life situations, which in turn emphasises the different girls’ intersectional power positions (cf. Crenshaw "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex"). Through the process of walking in someone else’s shoes, the girls get to experience how it feels to watch their own body and life from a distance. Simultaneously, they get to play the part of someone else. As a consequence, they learn about both their own life situation and intersectional power position, and about the girl whose body they temporarily reside in. Thus, the literalisation of the figure of speech “to walk in someone else’s shoes” becomes a learning process. By positioning each individual young woman as the active subject in another girl’s life and the passive object in their own life, the body switch functions as a fantasy literary equivalent to the photograph motif, which according to Roberta Seelinger Trites often is deployed as a vehicle for illuminating how people are simultaneously the subject and the object in their own lives in realistic adolescent literature (123). The article is based on the concept of intersectionality, photograph theory, Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival theory, and Tzvetan Todorov’s theory on how fantastic literature can turn figures of speech into literalised facts. These theories are all used to investigate how the body switch problematises and changes the witches’ ability to influence their respective life situation
The Picturebook App as Event: Interactivity and Immersion in Wuwu & Co.
No full textThis article explores analytical perspectives from theatre studies as an approach to analysing interactivity in picturebook apps, using the critically acclaimed Danish picturebook app Wuwu & Co. – A Magical Picturebook (2014) by Merete Pryds Helle and Kamila Slocinska as a case study. Drawing on theatre scholar Willmar Sauter’s analytical concept the theatrical event, the article proposes that interactive digital narratives for children should be analysed as events, as interactivity takes place between a reader and the work. To discuss the interactive features of the app, the article applies literature scholar Marie-Laure Ryan’s theories of narrative as virtual reality, especially with regards to the relationship between interactivity and immersion. In the analysis, the interactive features are examined with regards to both how the reader is allowed to participate as co-creator of the narrative as well as how the interactivity is experienced. The analysis shows what can be described as a discrepancy between the interactive and immersive experiences offered, caused by the interactive features that at different moments interrupt either temporal, spatial or emotional immersion. This happens even though the interactivity with Ryan’s terms can be described as internal-ontological, and thus as related to the narrative. As a consequence, a discussion of the significance of interactivity in digital narratives for children cannot be limited to including the formal, intra-fictional relationship between the narrative and the interactive features. Rather, it must also include the reader and the reading experience. This means that an analysis of interactivity in digital narratives on tablets will have to include both a discussion of how the interactive features are intended to work, and further, an evaluation of the actual effect of the interactive feature, when realised by a reader in a live event
Åse Marie Ommundsen, Per Thomas Andersen og Liv Bliksrud (red.), Modernitet, barndom, historie: Festskrift til Harald Bache-Wiig
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En röd ballong: Om sexualitet som åldersöverskridande erfarenhet i Kerstin Thorvalls mellanåldersböcker
No full textTitle: A Red Balloon: On Sexuality as a Boundary-Crossing Experience in Terms of Age in Kerstin Thorvall's Children's NovelsThis article discusses how feelings about and experiences of sexuality and pleasure are depicted in children’s books by Swedish author Kerstin Thorvall. It is well known that Thorvall wrote about sexuality in an outspoken and unconventional way for adults in the 1970s. Less known is that she already had touched upon these topics in her novels for young children in the 1960s and early 70s. This article analyses four of those children’s novels and argues that one has to use a broad definition of sexuality in order to capture the way children´s literature articulate erotic experiences. Hélène Cixous’ concept of “feminine jouissance” is therefore used to analyse the way Thorvall writes about lust and pleasure. This “feminine jouissance” is not directed towards a specific person or centered on specific parts of the body (as is the “masculine monosexual jouissance” according to Cixous) but is instead directed towards a variety of objects and centred on the whole body, involving all senses. The article also investigates how the relation between adult (hetero)sexuality and children’s imagined innocence is challenged in Thorvall’s writings, drawing on Tison Pugh’s queer theoretical study from 2010 on heterosexuality in children’s literature. Thorvall’s depiction of sexuality crosses boundaries between adults and children – and between adult literature and children’s literature – since the language used to express pleasure is the same whether Thorvall writes for young people or adults
