Children's Literature & Culture

"Pinocchio, a Political Puppet: the Fascist Adventures of Collodi’s Novel"

by Caterina Sinibaldi

Italian studies, Vol. 66 No. 3 (November 2011)

"Dangerous Children and Children in Danger. Reading American comics under the Italian Fascist regime."

by Caterina Sinibaldi

The Nation in Children's Literature. Nations of Childhood, ed. by Kit Kelen and Bjorn Sundmark (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2012)

La guerre pour la jeunesse

by Yan Hamel

Voix et Images (dossier "La guerre dans la littérature québécoise"), no 110, hiver 2012, p. 83-94.

What Were These Characters Thinking?! Using Sufi Tales to Cultivate Critical Thinking in Children (co-author)

by Jurgis (George) Brakas

The purpose of this essay is to help elementary school teachers use picture storybooks to develop their students’... more The purpose of this essay is to help elementary school teachers use picture storybooks to develop their students’ critical thinking skills, arguably the most important skill students can learn. To achieve that purpose, we selected four delightful Sufi tales written for Western children, tales in which the thinking of the characters has gone or does go awry. Each story raises its own perplexing question: Why would an old woman insist an eagle is a pigeon? How could five men—in the same situation and confronted with the same object—arrive at five widely different and incorrect identifications of that object? How does a chicken frighten a group of townspeople to the point where they want to escape from the earth? Why would villagers be terrified by a fruit? These are all questions that involve critical thinking issues. The framework we use for analyzing the stories is a modified version of Paul and Elder’s Elements of Thought and the work of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge. Our approach is to summarize the stories; to systematically apply our framework to each story, thereby providing teachers with a tool for helping children comprehend them; to offer, on that basis, a brief, narrative account of the significance of each story, indicating in what way the thinking of the characters has gone awry and what principle of thinking would have prevented it; and, finally, to add a few open-ended questions to illustrate how the principles of thinking in each story can be applied to the personal lives of the children. Our approach integrates teaching philosophy and reading comprehension in a way that makes it fit naturally into the elementary school curriculum, literacy activities being an integral part of it. What the children learn can serve as a foundation for them as they begin to develop a system of thought for decision-making and problem-solving that will serve them well throughout their lives.

Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve, and Children of Aslan: An Environmentalist Perspective on The Chronicles of Narnia

by Margarita Carretero González

L'enfance colonisée

by Yan Hamel

Camus pour la jeunesse: Les Justes

by Yan Hamel

La terre en héritage, l'écriture en partage. Bruno Saint-Hill, de Nampilly à Swedenborg

by Laurent Déom

Published in "Héritage, filiation, transmission. Configurations littéraires (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles)" (ed. by Christian Chelebourg, David Martens and Myriam Watthee-Delmotte), Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2012.

"Que la littérature soit fondamentalement concernée par la question de la transmission est une évidence : en tant... more "Que la littérature soit fondamentalement concernée par la question de la transmission est une évidence : en tant que message adressé par un émetteur à un récepteur, elle relève d’une logique communicationnelle sur laquelle nous n’insisterons pas. Cette logique est souvent mise en exergue dans le cas de la littérature de jeunesse, car les objectifs pédagogiques que de nombreux prescripteurs assignent à celle-ci rendent cruciale sa dimension pragmatique : étant donné que l’émetteur est censé former le récepteur, l’on attend de son message qu’il se conforme aux valeurs en vigueur dans la communauté à laquelle appartiennent les lecteurs visés1.

Dans certaines productions littéraires pour la jeunesse, la transmission est également utilisée comme thématique. La question des relations entre parents et enfants, en particulier, est abordée dans de nombreuses œuvres, qu’il s’agisse d’en louer les attraits, d’en dépeindre les difficultés ou d’en présenter les paradoxes. Il arrive en outre que ce thème se décline en sous-thèmes plus spécifiques, parmi lesquels celui de la problématique patrimoniale.

Ainsi, le roman de Bruno Saint-Hill Tempête sur Nampilly (publié en 1950 aux éditions Alsatia dans la collection « Signe de piste ») raconte l’histoire d’un héritage menacé que le héros tente de recouvrer. Si cette thématique présente un intérêt dans cet ouvrage, ce n’est pas seulement parce qu’elle est associée à un certain nombre d’enjeux culturels, politiques et sociaux, que nous n’évoquerons d’ailleurs qu’au passage, mais aussi parce qu’elle occupe une place considérable dans la démarche de création de l’écrivain. La transition du thématique au poétique va toutefois de pair avec une modification sensible de la façon dont Saint-Hill conçoit l’héritage, comme nous le montrerons."

Phantasies of Matriarchy In Victorian Children's Literature

by Alison Chapman

Inclusive Identity- Homosexuality in Children's Literature

by Aaron Dickey

Shared reading

by Atta Gebril

Gebril, A & Saddallah, A. (2002). Shared reading. In SPEER: Spotlight on primary English education resources. A resource text for Egyptian educators, supervisors and teachers. Cairo: Academy for Educational Development.

Learning to laugh

by Erica Fudge

'The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth'

by Richard Shakeshaft

Written as part of the requirements for an MEd in Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. August 2011

This thesis surveys the way in which the young adult protagonists are presented in Feed by M T Anderson, Little... more This thesis surveys the way in which the young adult protagonists are presented in Feed by M T Anderson, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Hybrids by David Thorpe and Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini. In particular, it focuses on their physical creation and representation, the question of the human-ness and humanity of a human with embedded technology, and the ways in which the dystopian societies in which they live are constructed. It also examines the way in which the texts can be seen to be didactic in style through consideration of the authors, their intentions, and their use of peritextual and epitextual features.

Although the study shows that the dystopian authors’ creations of visions of a future dominated by technology are intended to be a warning to the contemporary reader, it also identifies ways in which the presentation of the young adults demonstrates the importance and power of humanity in the portrayal of characters in fictional texts, and to some extent celebrates their engagement with technology. However, their presentation and other academic research confirms the authors’ need to warn people about the effects of technology and I suggest general ways in which this needs to be undertaken.

The nature of the study means that it adopts a constructionist approach and combines traditional literary analysis of aspects of form, structure and language with secondary sources from the fields of technology, neuroscience, human and social psychology, biology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. I believe this demonstrates, as the novels do, the way in which developments in technology have blurred boundaries in all areas of life and the need for a more holistic approach to the study of children’s literature involving new technology.

An analysis of Year 7 and Year 10 girls’ responses to Shaun Tan’s 'The Red Tree'

by Richard Shakeshaft

Written as part of the requirements for an MEd in Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. August 2010

Cose da grandi. Identità collettive e valori civili nei fumetti italiani del dopoguerra (1945-1955)

by Juri Meda

Published in “Annali di storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche in Italia”, n.9, 2002, pp.285-336.

Per una storia della stampa periodica per l’infanzia e la gioventù in Italia fra ’800 e ’900

by Juri Meda

Published in: Fabiana Loparco, I bambini e la guerra: il “Corriere dei Piccoli” e il primo conflitto mondiale (1915-1918), Firenze, Nerbini, 2011, pp. 7-24.

Presentation of the editorial series «Nerbiniana: History of Magazines for Children and Youth». Presentation of the editorial series «Nerbiniana: History of Magazines for Children and Youth».

Lotta di classe e opposizione politica in un periodico clandestino per ragazzi: “Il Fanciullo Proletario” (1927-1929)

by Juri Meda

Published in: Maurizio Ridolfi (ed.), Gastone Sozzi: le passioni politiche, i sentimenti, l’antifascismo, Cesena, Società editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio”, 2006, pp. 77-90.

Il fumo delle barricate: la memoria dell’agosto 1922 nei fumetti

by Juri Meda

Published in: William Gambetta & Massimo Giuffredi (eds.), Memorie d’agosto: letture delle Barricate antifasciste di Parma del 1922, Milano, Edizioni Punto Rosso, 2007, pp. 217-239.

Reading other people’s minds through word and image

by Maria Nikolajeva

Children's literature in education 2012:2

The articles considers how emotions can be conveyed through the interaction of word and image in picturebooks... more The articles considers how emotions can be conveyed through the interaction of word and image in picturebooks addressed to young readers. The theoretical framework employed in the article develops ideas from cognitive literary theory adapting it to the specific conditions in which there is a significant difference between the sender's and the recipient's cognitive level. The concept of emotion ekphrasis is used to demonstrate the various ways of representing emotions, and a special attention is paid to the issues of mind-reading, empathy and other aspects of recipients' affective engagement. The theoretical argument is illustrated by picturebooks by Max Velthuijs, Shaun Tan, Anthony Browne, and Maurice Sendak.

What's Left?

by Philip Nel

Co-authored with Julia Mickenberg. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 30.4 (Winter 2005).
muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/toc/chq30.4.html
(Available to subscribers of ProjectMuse.)