scholarly journals (De)monstration: Interpreting the monsters of English children's literature.

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jonathan Padley ◽  

This thesis is intended to document and explain the peculiarly high incidence of monsters in English children’s literature, where monsters are understood in the term’s full etymological sense as things which demonstrate through disturbance. In this context, monsters are frequently young people themselves; the youthful protagonists of children’s literature. Their demonstrative operation typically functions not only as an overt or covert tool by which to educate children’s literature’s implied child audience, but also as a wider indicator - demonstrator - of adult appreciations of and arguments over children and how children should be permitted to grow. In this latter role especially, children are rendered truly monstrous as alienated and problematic tokens in adult cultural arguments. They can fast become such efficient demonstrators of adult crises that their very presence engenders all the notions of unacceptability with which monsters are characteristically associated. The chronological range of this thesis’ study is the eighteenth-century to the present. From this period, the following children’s authors, children’s books, and series of children’s books have been examined in detail: • Thomas Day: Sandford and Merton • Anna Laetitia Barbauld: Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose for Children • Sarah Trimmer: Fabulous Histories • Mary Martha Sherwood: The Fairchild Family • Charles Kingsley: The Water-Babies • Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass • George MacDonald: At the Back of the North Wind • J.M. Barrie: Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Peter Pan, and Peter and Wendy • C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Last Battle) • J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter {The Philosopher’s Stone, The Chamber of Secrets, The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Goblet of Fire, The Order of the Phoenix, and The HalfBlood Prince). The theoretical notions of monsters and monstrosity that are used to discuss these texts draw principally on the writings on the sublime by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, the uncanny by Sigmund Freud, and the fantastic by Tzvetan Todorov.

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Türkan Tosun

This study analyses the Kurdish children' literature in the North. The goal is to show works which about kurdish children's literature in the North. First, the definitions of child, childhood and children's literature have been explained. Then about history of Kurdish children's literature some informations are given. Kurdish children's literature when started and who has written for the children is also mentioned. Kurdish writers, poet and intellectuals who work for children in the North are introduced. Kurdish children' magazines and publishers that publish Kurdish children's books in the North also been the subject of this article.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Joosen

Compared to the attention that children's literature scholars have paid to the construction of childhood in children's literature and the role of adults as authors, mediators and readers of children's books, few researchers have made a systematic study of adults as characters in children's books. This article analyses the construction of adulthood in a selection of texts by the Dutch author and Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Guus Kuijer and connects them with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's recent concept of ‘childism’ – a form of prejudice targeted against children. Whereas Kuijer published a severe critique of adulthood in Het geminachte kind [The despised child] (1980), in his literary works he explores a variety of positions that adults can take towards children, with varying degrees of childist features. Such a systematic and comparative analysis of the way grown-ups are characterised in children's texts helps to shed light on a didactic potential that materialises in different adult subject positions. After all, not only literary and artistic aspects of children's literature may be aimed at the adult reader (as well as the child), but also the didactic aspect of children's books can cross over between different age groups.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Ramesh Nair

Children's literature serves as a powerful medium through which children construct messages about their roles In society and gender Identity is often central to this construction. Although possessing mental schemas about gender differences is helpful when children organize their ideas of the world around them, problems occur when children are exposed to a constant barrage of uncompromising, gender-schematic sources that lead to stereotyping which in turn represses the full development of the child. This paper focuses on how gender is represented in a selection of Malaysian children's books published in the English language. Relying on the type of content analysis employed by previous feminist social science researchers, I explore this selection of Malaysian children's books for young children and highlight some areas of concern with regard to the construction of maleness and femaleness in these texts. The results reveal Imbalances at various levels Including the distribution of main, supporting and minor characters along gendered lines and the positioning of male and female characters In the visual Illustrations. The stereotyping of these characters In terms of their behavioural traits will be discussed with the aim of drawing attention to the need for us to take concerted measures to provide our children with books that will help them realize their potential to the fullest.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maj Asplund Carlsson ◽  
Johannes Lunneblad

Title: Where “the wild things” are: An author of children’s books on a visit to the suburbsAbstract:Few studies have been carried out on children’s literature from a post-colonial perspective. In this article, we look closer at four picture books recently published in Sweden with the purpose of giving children from urban areas patterns of identification. The aim of our study is to see how the ‘suburb’ is articulated as a multi-accented sign. Three themes are elaborated in our analysis, i.e. loneliness and alienation, drug abuse and misery as well as small business occurrence. We also discuss the consequences for children in early years of an encounter with a distorted or alienated view of suburban culture.


Bibliosphere ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
E. V. Engalycheva

The article is devoted to the history of Siberian regional children's book publishing. The author has collected theoretic-practical opinions of historians, bibliologists, publishers and booksellers, librarians and bibliographers, psychologists and sociologists, which purpose is to generalize and reveal regularities of books' flow for children. V. G. Belinsky, L. N. Tolstoy, F. G. Tol’, N. V. Chekhov developed the first concepts of children's book. N. K. Krupskaya, V. A. Sukhomlinsky studied the «core» of the children book repertoire. V. G. Sopikov, B. S. Bondarsky reviewed children's literature of the 19th century in their bibliographic works. The author allocated some organizational components using formal-logical, comparative-historical and structural-typological methods. The first block is related to studying such definitions as «children's book», «children's literature», «editions for children», «a circle of childhood reading», «the repertoire of children's books», their typological signs. The presented concepts are investigated according to tasks, which children's editions solve. S. G. Antonova and S. A. Karaichentseva touched issues of children's literature typology in their publications. The second block of literature reveals the children's book development in Russia in various periods of its formation. I. E. Barenbaum, A. A. Grechikhin, A. A. Belovitskaya studied general fundamentals of the book's history, while A. Ivich, L. Kohn, I. Lupanova considered the history of children’s books. The third block is devoted to printing and art features of the children's book design, activity of universal and specialized publishing houses to distribute literature for children. The fourth block explains such category as «reader - library», considers techniques of work with children's book, offers methodical recommendations for teachers and tutors. Readers’ activity is examined as well. The author analyzes interests, factors, incentives and aims influencing childhood reading. Dissertation researches disclose the regional specifics of children's book publishing in 1980-2013, confirm the considered subject relevance. The historical, comparative, formal and logical analysis carried out by the author will be useful both the specialists in publishing and editorial affairs, researchers studying the history and development of the children's book, historians, and teachers in the educational process of such courses as «Publishing and Editing», «Children's Literature», «Book Science». The author concludes that the children's book has been studied in different periods of its development in the context of numerous aspects, directions and components, which makes it possible to reveal the special patterns of its existence.


2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 241-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Thomson-Wohlgemuth

Abstract This paper describes the status of translation and publication of East German children’s literature during the period of the Cold War. It briefly gives an indication of the high value placed on translation and translators in the socialist regime. Finally it focuses on the main criteria influencing the translation and publication of children’s books with the economic and ideological factors being the most significant and gives brief examples from the East German censorship files.


Literator ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-82
Author(s):  
G. Wybenga

M.E.R. – 'The right to a place of honour' as the author of children’s books A recognition of M.E.R.’s writing developed late in her career. One of the reasons for this was most probably that she was almost exclusively involved in writing for children in the 1920s and early 1930s. Her many publications for children included not only “Kinders van die Voortrek” and the well-known “Karlien en Kandas”, but many more. It was only in the late 1940s after she had published books for adults that she received recognition for her work – which did not happen in the case of her earlier children’s books. Although she is at present regarded as a pioneer of children’s literature, these books have still not been accepted as part of the canon. This article attempts to indicate why she is considered a pioneer by situating her work in the literary context of the time. By analysing the individual books for children as texts in their own right, the article demonstates that dichotomising her work into literature for children and literature for adults is not justified. From the onset till the end of her career M.E.R.’s publications form one continuous oeuvre. The same trends observable in her early work for children are present in the later work for adults.


Target ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Puurtinen

Abstract Owing to children's developing reading skills and world knowledge, readability (comprehensibility as well as speakability) can be regarded as an important requirement of children's literature. This article focusses on one determinant of readability, the frequency of nonflnite constructions in children's books both originally written in Finnish and translated from English into Finnish. A high frequency of complex nonfinite constructions is likely to have a negative effect on readability, and consequently they might be expected to occur relatively infrequently both in original and in translated children's literature. A quantitative study of a large number of children's books shows that Finnish originals have indeed tended to favour finiteness, whereas translations show a higher degree of non-finiteness. The translations thus fail to conform to one of the syntactic norms of the receiving literature. The article discusses potential reasons for this syntactic difference, considers the possibility of the existence of different sets of norms for translated and originally Finnish children's books, and speculates upon the innovatory influence of translations.


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