Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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Karin Bloom, CORDELIA, 1881–1942: Profilo storico di una rivista per ragazze [En flicktidnings historia]
No full textReview/recensio
”Den kyrkan är vackrast i världen”. Den ortodoxa kyrkan och ikonerna i Ilon Wiklands barndomsskildring och bildskapande
No full text”That Church is the Most Beautiful in the World”: The Orthodox Church and Icons in the Childhood Narratives and Pictures of Ilon Wikland. Ilon Wikland (b. Pääbo, 1930), a well-known illustrator of children’s books, has depicted her childhood in Estonia and her search for refuge in Sweden in 1944 in four picturebooks (1995–2007). This article focuses on Den långa, långa resan (1995; The Long, Long Journey, with text by Rose Lagercrantz) and I min farmors hus (2005; At My Grandmother’s House, with text by Barbro Lindgren), with the aim of examining the role of Orthodox churches and icons in Ilon Wikland’s childhood narratives and pictures. Wikland’s grandfather was the leader of the choir in the local Orthodox church in Haapsalu. It is demonstrated that depictions of this church and icons from her grandparent’s home help to place the picturebooks in time and space and contribute to their autobiographical and historical accuracy. Three different themes found in the narratives are explored, since they are essential for the protagonist’s experiences of warfare and flight, and interrelated with the functions of the Orthodox church and its icons. The first is the girl’s sense of freedom and beauty at home and at the Orthodox church. The second theme is her loneliness and desolation when separated from her grandparents and her best friend during the war, situations in which the icons seem to participate in her despair. The third theme is the significance of the name, Ilon, for the girl’s emerging identity, as well as for the convergence of the protagonist’s identity with the illustrator’s, similar to how an Orthodox icon is identified by means of an inscription containing the name of the depicted person. The conclusion is, that Ilon Wikland has not only rendered the Orthodox church of her childhood and the icons of her grandparents in her pictures. Furthermore, she has recreated their importance for her early life and connected her illustrations with the theology and aesthetics of Orthodox icons
Fortvivlelse som mulighed: En eksistensfilosofisk læsning af The Red Tree med perspektivering til Drengen der blev væk fra sig selv
No full textIt is a widely accepted opinion that children should not be exposed to feelings of despair or meaninglessness. Based on an analysis of two picturebooks, Shaun Tan’s The Red Tree (2001) and Lone Munksgaard Nielsen and Pia Thaulov’s The Boy Who Lost Himself (2015), this article demonstrates, however, that these feelings are necessary and desirable when trying to discover who you are. Feeling despondent or enclosed contains a possibility of finding yourself and therefore it should not be neglected or eliminated. The theoretical framework of the article is the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s understanding of becoming a human being. For Kierkegaard, despair, meaninglessness and enclosedness are precisely the feelings that can help you become who you are. The article demonstrates how the protagonists’ despair and enclosedness gives them the possibility to realize themselves as human beings. From the child’s perspective, these picturebooks recount an existential theme fundamental to everyone: How do we become who we are
”Läs kamrat Jesus i Söndagsskolorna!” Mottagandet av Sven Wernströms Kamrat Jesus i Sverige
No full textSven Wernström’s children’s book Kamrat Jesus (Comrade Jesus, 1971) depicts Jesus as a revolutionary leader. The author’s intention was to generate a debate on the Bible’s way of describing Jesus. When published, Kamrat Jesus was treated in thirty-two reviews and polemical articles, published in daily papers, Christian Magazines and periodicals for teachers of religion, librarians and Sunday-school teachers. The 1970s is generally described as a decade dominated by the agenda of the left, and in line with this the majority of the reviews published in daily papers convey a positive view of the work. However, in this article, all the reviews are studied, and then another image emerges. The periodicals that are aimed at teachers of religion, librarians and church leaders ignore the work to a high extent, or reject it due to aesthetical considerations or its lack of concordance with current Bible research. Thus, Kamrat Jesus, despite the political climate, did not fulfil the author’s aim. The article shows that in literary surveys and special-feature issues on children’s literature and religion, the work was ignored for the remainder of the 1970s. Presenting Jesus as a revolutionary was thus not commonly accepted even during this left-wing decade
Ingrid Tomkowiak, Ute Dettmar, Gabriele von Glasenapp, Caroline Roeder (red.), An allen Fronten: Kriege und politische Konflikte in Kinder- und Jugendmedien
No full textReview/Recensio
Reconstructing multiculturalism: Social categorizations challenged in the Förskolan Rävlyan and Tatu and Patu series
No full textAbstract: In this article, representations of multiculturalism in Swedish and Finnish picturebooks are examined through the Förskolan Rävlyan and Tatu and Patu series. In the article, multiculturalism is understood and studied with an intersectional approach. This means considering sociocultural categorizations such as ethnicity, gender, nationality and disability to be meaningful to the existing social, political and economic structures of societies. These categorizations are seen to have the power to reproduce and circulate dominant discourses that effect the social inclusion and exclusion of certain groups of people. Thus, the social categories are examined as performative textual discourses, meaning that texts are acknowledged to be not only reflecting, but also creating social reality. Both series present diversity as an integrated part of the story by means of non-explicit multiculturalism. The analysis reveals that both series of books contain representations of diversity that can challenge some possibly exclusive social categorizations, such as nationality. In conclusion, these books can be seen to be progressive in their attempts to promote a transformative understanding of today’s Nordic societies. Keywords: Diversity, Intersectionality, Multiculturalism, Performativity theory, Swedish picturebooks, Finnish picturebooks, Siv Widerberg, Aino Havukainen, Sami Toivone
