‘The Child and the Book ’
7 - 9 April 2006, Newcastle University
Contacts| Programme | Biographies | Registration | Accommodation |
Programme
Friday evening
4:00-5:00 pm
Registration
Coffee and Tea
5:00-6:00 pm
Welcome from the Organisers - Laura Atkins (University of Newcastle/Roehampton
University), Michele Gill (University of Newcastle), and Liz Thiel (Roehampton
University)
Keynote - Kim
Reynolds (Professor of Children’s Literature, University
of Newcastle, England)
6:00-6:45 pm
Wine and nibbles reception hosted by Pied
Piper Publishing
7:00-8:00 pm
Author David Almond will be
speaking and signing books
Saturday
9:00-9:30
Registration (for those arriving Saturday)
9:30-11:00
Parallel presentations session 1
1A Science Fiction/ Technology
NOGA APPLEBAUM, Roehampton University, England. A Future without
a Past: Technology and History in Three Children’s Science Fiction Novels
CASSIE HAGUE, University of Exeter, England, Apocalyptic Youth
Fiction and Limit: The Politics of the Outside
ALICE BELL, Humanities Programme, Imperial College, London,
England. Anachronistic Fantastic: Disrupted Historical Codes and a “Synthetic”
View of Childhood
1B Boys and Heroes
RACHEL E. JOHNSON, University of Worcester, England
The Past and Future Hero: the Henty Boy in the Twenty-First Century
MICHELE GILL, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Alex Rider, Teenage Spy: A Hero of the White Male Mind?
ALISON PIPITONE, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY, USA
The New Hero: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Prisoner of Zenda, and a New Era
of Adventure
1C Publishing
SYLVIA WARNECKE, The Open University, England
Publishing GDR Children’s Literature as a Reflection of the Conflict between
Idealism and Control in the State Party’s Cultural Policy – Franz
Fühmann’s Prometheus
JANE CLAES, University of Houston Clear Lake, Houston, Texas,
USA
May Massee: Integrity in Children’s Publishing
MARGARET LABUSCHAGNE, Publishing Studies Programme, Department
of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa
The Poor Relation: A Look at the Challenges in Undertaking Research into a Publishing
History of South African Children’s Books in English
1D Voice of the Child
MARE MÜÜRSEPP, Tallinn University,
Estonia
The Voice of the Child in Literature
ÅSE MARIE OMMUNDSEN, University of Oslo, Norway
Fiction for All Ages? “All-ages-literature” as a New Trend in Late
Modern Norwegian Children’s Literature
FARZAD BOOBANI, Lecturer in English Literature, University
of Guilan, Iran, Children’s Literature and Polyphonic Potentialities
11:00-11:30
Coffee/tea break
11:30-1:00 PARALLEL PRESENTATIONS SESSION 2
2A Outside the Book
ANETTE ØSTER, Centre for Children's
Literature, The Danish University of Education, Denmark. Children’s Literature
Historiography: A Danish perspective
NOLAN DALRYMPLE, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
North East Childhood: Representations of the North East of England in the Work
of Robert Westall
SUSAN ELSLEY, Centre for Research on Families and Relationships
(CRFR) University of Edinburgh, Scotland. "The Autonomous Child: Fact or
Fiction? Children’s Views on Child Characters"
2B War and Violence
LAURA ATKINS, University of Newcastle upon
Tyne and Roehampton University, England
Graphic Images: Depicting the Bombings of Hiroshima in the Graphic Novel Barefoot
Gen
SARAH PARK, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Graduate
School of Library and Information Science, USA
Colonialism and War in Children’s Literature: Remembering Korea 1935-1953
NICOLE CARROLL, SUNY College at Buffalo, USA
Rescue… From What? War, Violence, and Refugees in Young Adult Literature
2C From the Past to the Present
MAUREEN TORPEY, Buffalo State College, Buffalo,
NY, USA
Supposing and Wishing: The Power of Storytelling in A Little Princess and A
Great and Terrible Beauty
ZOE JAQUES, Anglia Ruskin University, England
Evolutionary and Fairy-tale Narrative in Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies
ANGELIKA ZIRKER, Tuebingen University, Germany
The Alice Books: From the Past to the Future
2D Fantasy and Fairy Tales
SANNA LEHTONEN, Department of Languages/ English,
University of Jyväskylä, Finland, ”There’s been an accident!
Something’s wrong!” – Reformulating a Feminine Identity Quest
in Diana Wynne Jones’s The Time of the Ghost.
JENNIFER SATTAUR, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales
Contemporary Fairytale Retrieval: Dark Fiction for Children
MARIA-VENETIA KYRITSI, University of East Anglia, England
“Thou shalt suck the breast of kings…” (Isaiah 60:16): Scatological,
Sexual and Bodily Allusions in the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen
1:00-2:30
Lunch
2:30-4:00
Parallel presentations session 3
3A Picturebooks
SARAH WHITE GILMARTIN, Buffalo State College,
Buffalo, New York, USA, The Life and Work of Beatrix Potter: The Move from Repression
to Rebellion
ARLENE HSING, University of Newcastle, England
Semiotics of Gaiman-Mckean, and Some Problems with It
ANASTASIA ECONOMIDOU, School of Educational Sciences, Democritus
University of Thrace, Greece
The Changing Picturebook, the Changing Reader: Contemporary Greek Picturebooks
in Process
3B Cultural Identity
TAMMY MIELKE, University of Worcester, UK
Repeating the Past to Shape the Future: Examining Education in Key Corner and
Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry
REBECCA LADBROOK, Oxford Brookes University, England
Writing the Refugee Experience
DULCIE PETTIGREW, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Representations of Childhood in the American West
3C Popular Fiction
KIM SZYMANSKI, University of Sunderland, England
An Exploration of Agency in Teenage Fiction
CLIVE BARNES, England
Children Playing at Savages: Some Thoughts on a Recurring Theme in Twentieth
Century Children’s Literature
JANE NEWLAND, University of Southampton, England
Solving the Mysteries of Series Fiction for Young Readers: How Deleuze Can Help
3D Innocence and Experience
ULF SCHÖNE, Stavanger University, Norway
Violets or Violence? – Anarchism in Children’s Literature
KRISTEN SIPPER, University of Nottingham, England
The Development of the Child Hero in Children’s Fiction
LIZ THIEL, Roehampton University, England
An Invitation to Explore: David Almond's Early Children's Texts and the Adolescent
Reader
4:00-4:15
Coffee and Tea
4:15-4:45
MEDAL poster presentation by Kay Sambell
and Mel Gibson (Northumbria University, UK)
4:45-5:30
The State of Research: Comparing Trends in Graduate and Postgraduate
Study
Panel discussion by IRSCL
board members Clare
Bradford (Deakin University, Australia), Dan
Hade (Penn State University, USA), and Ariko
Kawabata (Aichi Prefectural University, Japan)
5:30-6:00
Closing remarks
7:30-10:00
Dinner at the Assembly Room, optional
Sunday
*Spaces are strictly limited for the Research Methods event at Seven Stories and places will be allocated on a first come first allocated basis. The walking tour of the Ousburn Valley is free of charge and can be taken in addition to seven stories or as an alternative.
10:00am
At Seven
Stories, The Centre for Children's Books
Research Methods training with IRSCL board members Mavis Reimer (University
of Winnipeg, Canada) and Morag Styles (University of Cambridge, UK). This will
alternate with tours of the Seven Stories galleries.
10:00-11:30
Research Methods Group A; Tour Group B
11:30-1:00
Research Methods Group B; Tour Group A
1:00 pm
Buffet Lunch in Cafe
ABSTRACTS
1A Science Fiction/ Technology
NOGA APPLEBAUM, Roehampton University, England
A Future without a Past: Technology and History in Three Children’s Science
Fiction Novels
“The past…It’s gone, lost. History drowned and we pulled up
the ladder behind us” says Dr Rémy Turcat, the archaeologist in
Jan Mark’s Useful Idiots (2004, , 18). This statement represents the state
of affairs in three recent science fiction novels for young adults in which
the relationship between past and future is explored as a main theme: The Giver
(Lowry 1993); Mortal Engines (Reeve 2001); Useful Idiots (Mark, 2004). By analysing
these novels in light of C.P Snow’s controversial theory of The Two Cultures
as well as other key works discussing the fate of the Humanities in a technological
age, this paper will attempt to explore the underlying attitudes towards the
impact of technology on history embedded within the novels. The implications
of the findings will be discussed in the context of the ambivalent attitudes
existing among adults regarding children’s mastery of technological innovations.
CASSIE HAGUE, University of Exeter, England
Apocalyptic Youth Fiction and Limit: The Politics of the Outside
This paper is part of a project which aims to explore the limits of our political
imaginary through a study of apocalyptic youth fiction. It claims that futuristic
children’s novels set shortly after the event of nuclear war, for example,
should be understood as constituting a form of “limit experience.”
In representing ‘the end of the world’ the novels in question invoke
a concept of the ‘unthinkable,’ or, as Michel Foucault says, a kind
of ‘thought from the outside.’ Implicated in this ‘limit experience’
is what Foucault calls a ‘wrenching of the subject from itself’;
the ‘child’ reader witnesses an obliteration of humanity and the
eventual creation of a radically different human subject. Apocalyptic Youth
Fiction as ‘limit experience’ takes us to the limits of our collective
political and social imaginaries, and ultimately beyond those limits. The paper
therefore engages with French philosophical and literary theory to sketch a
theoretical framework based around Foucault’s concept of the ‘limit
experience.’ It then moves on to give a preliminary consideration of a
particular novel, Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence, highlighting some
of the ways that the novel evokes the experience of limit.
ALICE BELL, Humanities Programme, Imperial College, London,
England
Anachronistic Fantastic: Disrupted Historical Codes and a “Synthetic”
View of Childhood
Children’s Literature is often accused of living in the past, but recent
works (e.g. by Phillip Reeve, Eoin Colfer) display particularly playful use
of historical codes. Anachronistic, at times steam-punkish, they mix more than
historical eras; weaving cross-genre and explicitly blurring intellectual boundaries.
Environmental dystopias, where a technologically poisoned world is forced back
to “golden age” pre-industry, are not new or exclusive to children’s
literature. Still, as Rose’s (1992) criticisms of Alan Garner argue, Romantically
equating “purity” to nature and childhood is both widespread and
suspect. I argue these new texts, that twist linear history, do not Romantically
hark back to “nature”. Further they demonstrate an approach to technology
that is both supportive and critical. The increasing number of texts set in
post-industrial Victorian times is also indicative of this (e.g. Jan Mark, 2005,
much of Phillip Pullman). Keeping the equation of children to nature, which
I argue these new texts do, childhood is thus transformed from untouchable purity
to a location for synthesis. More Donna Haraway’s (1985) “Cyborg”
than Peter Pan. This paper does not suggest the sudden possibility of children’s
literature, nor is it a “Manifesto” for cyborg-children; I argue
such post-modern concepts of childhood demand development in our critical tools.
RACHEL E. JOHNSON, University of Worcester, England
The Past and Future Hero: the Henty Boy in the Twenty-First Century
This paper considers the question ‘Can the nineteenth-century Henty hero
be transferred into the twenty-first century? The contextualisation of G.A.
Henty, who he was, what he wrote and why he wrote it situates Henty and his
writing for children. An examination of the construct of the Henty hero investigates
the characteristics of the classical hero; the active hero; the adventure hero
and the fairy tale hero as they contribute to this construct. The question of
the appeal of the Henty hero and his transferability into a twenty-first century
context is addressed primarily through the rationale of the reprinting publishers
and the problem of ideology as opposed to character is highlighted. The investigation
concludes that the characteristics of the Henty hero in terms of Aristotelian
virtues have already transferred from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.
MICHELE GILL, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Alex Rider, Teenage Spy: A Hero of the White Male Mind?
The beginning of the twenty first century has seen a resurgence in boys’
adventure narratives in Britain, the most high profile being Anthony Horowitz’s
series of six novels which follow the quest of teenage hero Alex Rider; a spy
for MI6 or a boy grieving after the death of his uncle and guardian, Ian Rider.
This paper will consider potential reasons why the Adventure genre has been
re-embraced by authors and publishers in the new millennium and the ways in
which it has been ‘re-invented’ in the adventure landscapes of the
Alex Rider novels.
Examining both form and content in the narratives, I will look specifically
at their relationship with the nineteenth century Adventure Story genre, exploring
the ways in which Horowitz has engaged with and reconstructed ideologies from
an Imperialist discourse into twenty first century culture, in particular the
changing relationship between images of masculinity and nationally constructed
identities.
ALISON PIPITONE, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY, USA
The New Hero: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Prisoner of Zenda, and a New Era
of Adventure
The link between the books of Anthony Hope and the leadership style of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt is not an obvious one. Anthony Hope joined the ranks of popular
British writers at the turn of the 20th Century, when adventure, leisure and
a pursuit of the arts were very much in vogue. Along with somewhat trivial values
came something deeper: the presence of an individual, stripped of traditional
loyalties, who nonetheless possessed a strong moral compass. We know from comments
by FDR’s mother and letters he wrote when he was a boy that Anthony Hope
was among the young FDR’s favorite authors. I believe this is an extremely
important connection to explore. FDR is often viewed as an embodiment of democracy’s
potential and progress during the first half of the twentieth century. While
totalitarian governments emerged after World War I, so too did the buoyant idealism
exemplified by Roosevelt. My paper explores the kind of hero depicted by Anthony
Hope in The Prisoner of Zenda in relation to the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
SYLVIA WARNECKE, The Open University, England
Publishing GDR Children’s Literature as a Reflection of the Conflict between
Idealism and Control in the State Party’s Cultural Policy – Franz
Fühmann’s Prometheus
This paper examines the highly controversial public discussion of the award-winning
‘mythological novel’ Prometheus by Franz Fühmann as part of
the literary output of a state initiated publishing project for adapting myths,
sagas and epics for children and adolescent readers. The debate - held in the
leading GDR journal for children’s literature, Beiträge zur Kinder-
und Jugendliteratur - substantiates that the novel but even more so its illustrations
by Nuria Quevedo sparked an unusually lively exchange among authors, critics,
cultural politicians, publishers and young readers. The case study explores
why this particular exchange marks the beginnings of GDR children’s literature
criticism as a progressive and more self-determining force. In the context of
a cultural sphere where politicians prescribed the translation of Marxist-Leninist
cultural-political doctrine into children’s books by rewriting traditional
texts one remarkable outcome of this dialogue was that all adult contributors
agreed that the young reader’s approach to interpreting books and their
illustrations specifically reflected the limitations but also the critical potential
of the leading state party’s policy regarding children. My analysis also
highlights why this individual dialogue could instigate change which even eventually
affected the way in which literature and art were taught at GDR schools.
JANE CLAES, University of Houston Clear Lake, Houston, Texas,
USA
May Massee: Integrity in Children’s Publishing
American children’s book publishing entered a golden age early in the
twentieth century. In 1922, Doubleday named May Massee as head of their first
juvenile department. She left Doubleday in the early 1930s and started Viking
Press’s first juvenile publishing division where she remained until her
retirement in 1963. May Massee left an indelible stamp on the world of children’s
literature. Many American children’s classics such as The Story of Ping,
The Story of Ferdinand the Bull, Make Way for Ducklings, and Madeline all were
edited by May Massee. This study seeks to place May Massee’s career within
the historical and literary framework of American twentieth century children’s
publishing. Her contributions are highlighted and her impact upon children’s
literature is explored. The study focuses on Massee by analyzing two aspects
of her career. First, the place she holds in relation to her peers is reviewed
relying on critical biographical methods. Secondly, Massee’s extensive
book list is examined highlighting award winners, books still in print, and
editorial patterns. The major research question is what were May Massee’s
unique contributions to the children’s publishing field?
MARGARET LABUSCHAGNE, Publishing Studies Programme, Department
of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa
The Poor Relation: A Look at the Challenges in Undertaking Research into a Publishing
History of South African Children’s Books in English
Undertaking a study of the history of children’s book publishing is a
challenging task anywhere in the world, but especially so in South Africa. Although
there is a small group of academics working on the literary study of children’s
books, the research fields of Book History and Publishing Studies are in their
infancy, and not yet applied to English children’s books at all. Coupled
with this dearth of academic research is the political reality of South Africa’s
history of racially based oppression, censorship and privileging of Afrikaans.
Then there are the economic realities of South Africa’s poor book-buying
and book-reading culture (poor in more ways than one), and a publishing industry
almost totally reliant on a single market – the government. Why then,
with this background, would anyone undertake research in this area, particularly
for a PhD study? Let alone asking where one would begin. This paper offers some
answers to these questions through a discussion of the academic, political and
economic challenges outlined above. It will also explore possible methodologies
and approaches that could be used in such a study, suggested primary and secondary
sources, as well as a preliminary history of English language children’s
books in South Africa.
MARE MÜÜRSEPP, Tallinn University, Estonia
The Voice of the Child in Literature
The paper will concentrate on the analysis of the works presenting children’s
voice, concerning three kinds of authors (adult, adult and child together, child)
and the position of the text told by children’s voice towards the dominate
ideology.
The types of authors treated here are:
1) Adult: the story is composed to be expressed by the child character, from
child’s point of view.
2) Adult and child together: there are some writers highly interested in child’s
thinking and language, studying specially child’s activities, to use child’s
expression in their writing, supporting a belief, that children’s speech
and fantasy would be a rich source for the literature.
3) Child: there are the works, published using writings or oral telling by real
children, the text really created by the children.
The analysis of the texts of authors belonging to the types mentioned here will
lead to the answers to the questions: what about the texts expressing children’s
voice do speak? Are they filling certain “holes” in the mainstream
literature, mediating topic not known for adult? Is the text written by the
child an example of the art of is it an educational adventure?
ÅSE MARIE OMMUNDSEN, University of Oslo, Norway
Fiction for All Ages? “All-ages-literature” as a New Trend in Late
Modern Norwegian Children’s Literature
I find fiction for all ages to be one of the main trends in late modern Norwegian
children’s literature. The last years several young Norwegian authors
have had success with their fiction for all ages, or all-ages-literature, as
we call it in Norway. I define all-ages-literature as literature addressing
a dual audience. It is also easy to find examples of so-called all-ages-literature
which doesn’t address the child reader at all. Thus I will argue that
to be fiction for all ages, it must provide reader-positions for both a child
reader and an adult reader at the same time, and address what Barbara Wall (1991)
calls a dual audience. However, Norwegian fiction for all ages can be many things.
I divide the different kinds of fiction for all ages into three main groups,
namely naivistic all-ages-literature, existential all-ages-literature, and complex
all-ages-literature.
FARZAD BOOBANI, Lecturer in English Literature, University
of Guilan, Iran
Children’s Literature and Polyphonic Potentialities
Whose voice is it that we hear from works written for children? Do the authors
enter into a dialogue with the characters, and, thereby, with the children,
or do they merely project their own ideologically-determined identities on child-heroes?
By concentrating on such questions, this study attempts to trace the presence
– overt or covert – of the ideological predilections of the adult
author in Children’s Literature, and to discuss the possibility of the
existence of a multiplicity of voices – or polyphony, as defined by Mikhail
Bakhtin – in works for children. The argument will also be exemplified
by references to a brief history of Children’s Literature in Iran from
the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the present.
11:30-1:00 PARALLEL PRESENTATIONS SESSION 2
ANETTE ØSTER, Centre for Children's Literature, The
Danish University of Education, Denmark
Children’s Literature Historiography: A Danish perspective
One of the major debates in children’s literature is ‘What is children’s
literature?’ My project will be the first attempt to address this fundamental
question by looking at historical assumptions about the field as they have been
set out in formal published histories. I believe it is important to know where
you stand with respect to published histories of children’s literature
as they are a canonisation of selected works and they will therefore have a
directive influence on literature that is allowed to retain a profile. By extension,
it may also be said that any history of children’s literature dictates
how we see the past; it dictates the understanding and safeguarding of the children’s
literature we wish to promote as cultural heritage, since most histories of
children’s literature are based on specific national works. Several existing
histories have had an immense influence, particularly on mediators (in other
words, teachers, librarians, child carers, etc) and their knowledge and perception
of children’s literature. Thus histories can be said to play a contributory
role in the way children’s literature is perceived, appraised and presented.
NOLAN DALRYMPLE, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
North East Childhood: Representations of the North East of England in the Work
of Robert Westall
SUSAN ELSLEY, Centre for Research on Families and Relationships
(CRFR) University of Edinburgh, Scotland. "The Autonomous Child: Fact or
Fiction? Children’s Views on Child Characters"
Children’s books have traditionally portrayed children with a level of
autonomy and independence that is rare in children’s everyday lives. With
an increased recognition of children’s agency in society, this paper explores
whether the depiction of children in literature is now closer to the reality
of young people’s experience than in the past. Drawing on current research
with children and young people aged 10 to 14 years, the paper reflects on children’s
views of the fictional depiction of childhood, considering in particular their
perception of the power of children in texts. Books describe, and often enhance,
children’s competences and capacities, maximising the position of the
child fictional character as hero. In the heroic role, children are empowered
as decision makers, problem solvers and agents of change with a resulting displacement
in their relationships with adults. Texts therefore can put children central
stage in a way that is not generally reflected within societal norms. The paper
concludes by considering whether the depiction of childhood in children’s
books can be more profoundly understood by drawing on children’s and young
people’s views and how this, in turn, contributes to an increased awareness
of the ongoing development of children’s literature.
LAURA ATKINS, University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Roehampton
University, England
Graphic Images: Depicting the Bombings of Hiroshima in the Graphic Novel Barefoot
Gen
SARAH PARK, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Graduate
School of Library and Information Science, USA
Colonialism and War in Children’s Literature: Remembering Korea 1935-1953
The Japanese colonial period and Korean War are sensitive and painful topics
for many Korean Americans. It was the most traumatic period in modern Korean
history and left indelible scars on the Korean conscience. However, in both
in memory and literature, the colonial period and the Korean War remain relatively
silent compared to the discussions and books about other war periods, such as
the Holocaust. Since 1991 six children’s fictional books appeared that
address this time period in Korea. Given this emerging presence of Japanese
colonialism and Korean War stories, I seek to answer the question, “Is
children’s literature accurately and honestly portraying the complexity
and tragedy of Japanese Colonialism and the Korean War?” By adopting theoretical
frameworks used to analyze literature about the Holocaust and other traumatic
events, I analyze the literature to see what types of stories are shared, which
parts of history are reconstructed through the literature, whose points of view
and voices are speaking, and to what extent the stories reveal the violence
and oppression of the colonial period and Korean War. The findings from this
study will shed light on how trauma regarding modern Korean history is remembered
in literature for youth.
NICOLE CARROLL, SUNY College at Buffalo, USA
Rescue… From What? War, Violence, and Refugees in Young Adult Literature
Since World War II, and especially during the past decade, young adult literature
has undergone significant changes in its representations of trauma, war, and
refugee cultures. The literary world has presented young adults with alternative
narratives of war and trauma that, whether fiction or nonfiction, have become
more graphic in their depictions of violence, and more willing to tackle complexities
in cultural conflict and global issues. Science fiction author Robert Heinlein’s
futuristic Citizen of the Galaxy (1957), Cambodian author Chanrithy Him’s
When Broken Glass Floats (2000), and British author Bernard Ashley’s Little
Soldier (1999) contain varying degrees of violence. They also view differently
what it means to be “rescued” from conflict, what the conflict stems
from, how much the West is held responsible for its roles, and how the characters
react to being refugees. In these works of literature, the suffering experienced
after “rescue” is often comparable to that experienced in trying
to survive violent and isolating worlds. As young adult literature has become
more probing and honest with difficult issues like war and violence, some of
it—though valuable—may surpass what young adults are able to identify
with, internalize, and make sense of.
2C From the Past to the Present
MAUREEN TORPEY, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY, USA
Supposing and Wishing: The Power of Storytelling in A Little Princess and A
Great and Terrible Beauty
According to Karen E. Rowe, "Strand by strand weaving, like the craft practiced
on Philomela's loom or in the hand-spinning of Mother Goose, is the true art
of the fairy tale-and it is, I would submit, semiotically a female art"
(308). In many children's stories, the female characters, who are otherwise
limited by their sex, their youth, or their wealth, find sources of power in
their ability to become storytellers. In Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little
Princess, Sara Crewe finds her source of power through exercising her imagination
and "supposing" new worlds for herself and her friends. In Libba Bray's
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Gemma Doyle learns of the power she possesses when
she discovers a diary that her friends heartily dismiss as "a fairy tale"
(143). The fairy tale, however, is real, and soon Gemma learns how she can serve
as a portal to the realms, a parallel world where wishes and stories manifest
physically as quickly as the girls can think them. By observing such characters
as Sara and Gemma, young female readers learn that they too can find a source
of power rooted in the ability to create, read and believe stories.
ZOE JAQUES, Anglia Ruskin University, England
Evolutionary and Fairy-tale Narrative in Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies
This paper will consider Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1863) in the light
of fairytale narrative, evolutionary theory, and free will. Although Kingsley
writes fairytale archetypes into the natural world, with trout who 'very soon
forget' and salmon who are 'all true gentleman', his God is responsible for
'making things make themselves', or having the Darwinian, if accelerated, potential
to evolve. Yet change for Kingsley is not the random change of Darwinian evolutionary
theory, but a willed change that moves towards an eventual character transformation
- an almost Lamarckian acquired change where the focus is on each individual's
potential to improve and become, as Tom does, 'fit to be a man'. Kingsley's
naturalist also parodies Darwinian ideas of sexual selection by learning to
reverse Romantic ideas of beauty and the sublime. This moral way of viewing
the world, beyond apparent surfaces, is a central facet to traditional fairytale
structure, where principal characters learn to see beyond surface ugliness to
internal beauty, finding, for example, the prince in the frog. Kingsley's The
Water Babies celebrates through a fairytale journey the wonder of science, the
beauty of a 'real world' which can evolve, and imparts these morals while still
responding to the imagination of the child.
ANGELIKA ZIRKER, Tuebingen University, Germany
The Alice Books: From the Past to the Future
Since their publication in 1865 and 1872, Lewis Carroll’s Alice-books—Alice
in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass—have been favourites with
children and adults alike, as shows e.g. the number of translations and editions.
Still today the Alice-books seem to touch points of interest, both content-wise
and stylistically, and both children’s and adults’. They deal with
questions such as how the mind and consciousness of the child evolve and function,
language-related topics, the process of growing up from the child’s perspective,
but, maybe most important, they are fun.
Thus, they apparently influence contemporary writers, and this will be the major
focus of my talk. Five young writers wrote texts inspired by Alice’s adventures
and dealing with issues that are of interest to children and adolescents. They
embedded topics, motifs and events from Carroll’s text in contemporary
settings and ‘gave a twist’ to Alice in Wonderland, which was also
the title of a BBC broadcast in June 2005: “Dreaming Alice: Contemporary
Writers Give a Twist to Alice in Wonderland.” My talk will focus on how
they transformed elements from Carroll’s book to make them even more attractive
for today’s young and to which intent.
SANNA LEHTONEN, Department of Languages/ English, University
of Jyväskylä, Finland
”There’s been an accident! Something’s wrong!” –
Reformulating a Feminine Identity Quest in Diana Wynne Jones’s The Time
of the Ghost
Diana Wynne Jones’s The Time of the Ghost (1981) is an exceptional story
of a girl’s quest for identity. The novel combines intertextual elements
and narrative time-shifts to de/construct a feminine identity. In this paper,
I will consider the relationship between postmodern narrative strategies and
feminist issues and their effects on the construction of the protagonist Sally’s
identity. Mendlesohn (2005) and Attebery (1992) have discussed the novel and
remarked that gaining agency by learning to make choices is central to Sally’s
sense of identity, and that magic works as a metaphor for the process of growing
up. However, they read the novel mainly as fantasy, while it is also a reformulation
of a mystery story, a girls’ story, and a horror story. Thus, I want to
enhance the reading of intertextuality in the novel, which opens up further
possibilities for a feminist interpretation. I will discuss the text’s
presentation of a feminine identity quest as a circular, past-oriented journey,
applying Cavarero’s (2000) concept of the ’narratable self’.
Both Jones’s novel and Cavarero’s concept challenge the popular
culture’s assumptions of identities as purchases/ roles, and instead suggest
that each person has a unique identity formed by her story.
JENNIFER SATTAUR, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales
Contemporary Fairytale Retrieval: Dark Fiction for Children
Jack Zipes, in his various writings on children’s literature and fairytales,
argues that the primary value of fairytales is their subversive nature: a quality
which many critics agree is sadly lacking in contemporary renderings of fairytales,
and in children’s fiction in general. He is supported by a number of critics
who are concerned with such issues as censorship in children’s books,
writing down to children, the pandering of publishing industries to moralistic
parenting/schooling and political ideology, and the unconscious need of adults
to control and socialise children. Building on this idea, this paper seeks to
demonstrate that dark fiction for children, which avoids the tendency towards
happy endings and ‘cleaned up’ stories, serves a subversive and
thereby psychically healthy purpose. I utilise a Jungian approach in discussing
the psychological effects of terror and distress in therapeutic relation to
children’s literature. The paper concentrates on Philip Pullman’s
His Dark Materials, Robert Westall’s Blitzcat, and Tom Baker’s The
Boy Who Kicked Pigs, although Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate
Events and Eoin Colfer’s Artermis Fowl series are also examined. Moral
ambiguity, terror, disturbing emotion, and violence are examined in these works,
and their potential for furthering the psychic development of the reader.
MARIA-VENETIA KYRITSI, University of East Anglia, England
“Thou shalt suck the breast of kings…” (Isaiah 60:16): Scatological,
Sexual and Bodily Allusions in the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen
This paper will examine the issues surrounding the presence of scatological,
sexual and bodily allusions in the Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the Brothers
Grimm and the treatment they received by various English translators during
the 19th and 20th centuries. The presentation will mainly involve the exploration
of different tales and will concentrate on ‘untranslated’ fragments
of texts, which were related to taboo elements such as scatology, sexuality
and bodily functions and were either omitted or altered by the English translators.
The reasons for these omissions and alterations will be investigated and special
reference will be made to each translation’s historical setting and cultural
background, with the aim of reaching valuable conclusions regarding the scatology-,
sexuality- and bodily function-related literary norms and taboos surrounding
the child’s ‘innocence’ in 19th- and 20th-century children’s
literature in English. In the paper I will therefore employ a comparative translation
approach and will compare different translations of the same tales, as well
as juxtapose source and target text examples in a Powerpoint presentation. The
German originals which will be explored comparatively to the translated texts
will be the versions mainly used in translations throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries and the translation examples will be derived from various translations,
such as Edgar Taylor’s German Popular Stories (1823; 1826), Mrs H.H.B.
Paull’s Grimm’s Fairy Tales [1872], Margaret Hunt’s Grimm’s
Household Tales (1884), Mrs Edgar Lucas’s Fairy Tales of the Brothers
Grimm (1900), Francis Magoun’s and Alexander Krappe’s The Grimms’
German Folk Tales (1960) and Jack Zipes’ The Complete Fairy Tales of the
Brothers Grimm (1987).
2:30-4:00 PARALLEL PRESENTATIONS SESSION 3
SARAH WHITE GILMARTIN, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, New
York, USA
The Life and Work of Beatrix Potter: The Move from Repression to Rebellion
Despite the vast amount of research that exists on the texts of Beatrix Potter,
relatively little correlation is made between her life and the scope of her
stories, as well as the progression that takes place within her earlier works
to the later ones. This study focuses on both the life and work of Beatrix Potter,
and seeks to illustrate a subtle shift evident in both, from repression to rebellion,
particularly when comparing the canonical, earlier story The Tale of Peter Rabbit
(1902) to the later, lesser known story The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907). With
the application of psychoanalytic theory, specifically Kristeva’s abjection
theory, much is revealed about the trappings of Potter’s exterior and
interior life within these specific examples; Potter was working towards a definition
of self that was separate from her parents through the act, or process, of writing.
Through the application of this theory it can be seen that the act of moving
from repression to rebellion is deeply rooted in Potter’s childhood, as
she exhibited creativity from an early age, which can be viewed as a way of
sublimation, and repression of feelings which would later develop into a greater
sense of self-awareness as illustrated in her work.
ARLENE HSING, University of Newcastle, England
Semiotics of Gaiman-Mckean, and Some Problems with It
This paper will investigate complex combinations of codes in performance of
books of prominent picturebook-making partners Neil Gaiman and David McKean.
From The Day I Swapped my Dad for two Goldfish, The Wolves in the Walls, and
to their latest work MirrorMask, the complexity of both lexical and visual narrative
is increasing to a great extent. The picture-book genre offers an interesting
case for illuminating the formal dimensions of textual structure and for exploring
the meaning-expressive potential of the lexical and visual forms of signification
characteristic of such across-medial narrative texts. (Barbara Kiefer, 1988)
MirrorMask is especially extraordinary in its performance with its collage-like
illustration directly extracted from the film images, Theatre (or film) semiotics
is substantially involved in the dynamics of narratology of picture-book, which
makes the meaning-making more demanding and interchanged. Therefore, questions,
such as what kind of new visual approaches they have applied and what kind of
problems they might bring about for readers? What kind of narrative strategies
they have changed, and thus what kind of skills readers might need to acquire
and are they conflicting with conventional literacy, will be discussed in this
paper.
ANASTASIA ECONOMIDOU, School of Educational Sciences, Democritus
University of Thrace, Greece
The Changing Picturebook, the Changing Reader: Contemporary Greek Picturebooks
in Process
The picturebook , we will argue, is the form of children’s literature
that has undergone the most innovative changes in Greece over the past thirty
years. Through an analysis of indicative cases we will attempt to show that
apart from the very subjects of the stories, the most significant changes are
located in two areas: the relation between words and pictures and, consequently,
the role that such books ‘appoint’ to their young readers. The focal
point in the changes concerning the relation between words and pictures is the
gradually increasing ‘independence’ of the picture from the text:
whereas older Greek picturebooks remained consistently faithful to symmetry,
in the sense that a picture was equivalent to the text, or rather, was ‘in
the service’ of the latter, contemporary picturebooks, we will show, are
gradually moving towards the other end of the spectrum, that is, towards contradiction.
Experimentation in the above direction, however, has had a great impact on the
role of the reader of such books. For, such books now offer the latter the role
of an active partner who has to try and compose meaning not only by drawing
information from both pictures and words, but also by carefully observing and
interpreting the not always straightforward relations that are each time developed
between the latter.
TAMMY MIELKE, University of Worcester, UK
Repeating the Past to Shape the Future: Examining Education in Key Corner and
Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Repeated themes exist in literature intended for children. The manner in which
such themes are interpreted in literature varies depending on the socio-political
influences on the prevailing ideologies at the time of the writing and publication
of the work. This conference theme asks us to look at children’s literature
from the past to the future. In this paper, taken from research within my dissertation,
shows how a children’s book from the past, Key Corner by Eva Knox Evans
(1938) constructs African American childhood in an educational setting by depicting
a rural Georgian classroom in the segregated South. However, when Mildred Taylor
presents the same setting in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976?) and the rest
of the Logan series books which were writing and published in the 1970s and
1980s, a new reconstructed version of childhood within an educational setting
in the deep South is presented. Produced in very different social-political
contexts and by two authors of different race, I will analysis how African American
childhood was constructed and reconstructed and show how a certain theme in
a specific time and place can be constructed and reconstructed depending on
the adult manufactured social-political climate in which they were produced.
REBECCA LADBROOK, Oxford Brookes University, England
Writing the Refugee Experience
This paper addresses the current interest in refugees and asylum seekers as
centrally located protagonists in children’s fiction. In the past five
years an increasing number of prominent children’s authors (Elizabeth
Laird, Beverley Naidoo, Benjamin Zephaniah and Robert Swindells) have engaged
with issues surrounding the modern phenomenon of mass displacement and the associated
enforced migration, which often accompanies it. As a result there now exists
a body of work that provides a counterpoint to the often negative reporting
of asylum issues in the media, to which children have ready access. The novels
have as linking features the child protagonists’ first hand experience
of this country’s asylum procedures. While all of them invite the reader
to empathise with the character and their circumstances, they do so by employing
a variety of literary techniques, including changes in narratorial perspective.
Recent conflicts and causes for displacement are sensitively engaged with, including
the persecution of the Kurds in Iraq and the Taliban occupation of Kabul. The
child characters experience the full range of this government’s approach
to the problem of asylum as they face deportation, court procedures, children’s
homes, foster care and detainee centres, while simultaneously trying to settle
into school, make new friends and come to terms with their often traumatic past.
DULCIE PETTIGREW, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Representations of Childhood in the American West
I will examine three stories about nineteenth century pioneer childhood in the
American west. They are Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books drawn from her own
childhood in South Dakota (I will look specifically at Little Town on the Prairie),
Willa Cather’s novel (for adults) My Antonia, which drew from her childhood
experiences in Nebraska, and the recent children’s book Stop the Train
by British writer Geraldine McCaughrean, set in Oklahoma. How are gender and
sexuality presented in these three very different books? Which of these stories
provides the most authentic picture of childhood on the frontier?
KIM SZYMANSKI, University of Sunderland, England
An Exploration of Agency in Teenage Fiction
Taking as a starting point the assertion by John Stephens (2002) that authors
of teenage fiction are privileging certain kinds of masculinity within their
texts, this paper explores how examples of recent adolescent fiction have the
potential to empower readers in particular ways. This empowerment comes about
with the recognition of elements of subjectivity and more importantly agency
within characters depicted in the texts. I will through an examination of the
structures of the texts show how fragmentation and constant shifting within
the books cause the readers to be positioned in particular ways leading to a
greater understanding of not only the nature of texts but the socially constructed
nature of the readers own identities and their capacity to change them. The
presentation will also explore how texts like these may be used in classrooms
alongside a critical pedagogy.
CLIVE BARNES, England
Children Playing at Savages: Some Thoughts on a Recurring Theme in Twentieth
Century Children’s Literature
The idea of children, particularly boys, having a kinship to the savage appeared
in imaginative fiction and early psychological thought at the turn of the nineteenth
century in Britain and North America and played a leading part in shaping and
disseminating the ethos of character building youth movements, particularly
the Boy Scouts. It fed into the work of writers of British holiday adventure
like Ransome and Blyton in the middle of the following century and has continued
to have a fascination for writers for children. Although it has its origins
in association with imperial adventure and draws on assumptions about the savagery
of indigenous peoples, it is also an acknowledgement of a ‘tribal’
world of childhood (originally boyhood), linked with the experience of outdoor
play – camping, hunting and nature study; and associated with an idea
of children as naturally possessing a wild or savage nature antipathetic to
the routine adult-run conventional worlds of home, school and church. In this
paper, through consideration of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages
(1907) and David Almond’s Kit’s Wilderness (1999), I seek to highlight
both continuity and change in this theme over the twentieth century.
JANE NEWLAND, University of Southampton, England
Solving the Mysteries of Series Fiction for Young Readers: How Deleuze Can Help
Series fiction for young readers rarely receives a good press. Described as
the junk food of fiction, it is seen to ensnare young readers and trap them
in a circle of never-ending samey reading. Young readers thrive on it, however,
and the enthusiasm with which they devour series fiction is a ‘mystery’
to adults. With the immense success of series like Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket
it is time to take series fiction more seriously. This paper provides a new
critical approach to series fiction by drawing on the philosophies of Gilles
Deleuze. Starting from notions of generality and resemblance which have dominated
criticism of series fiction to date, the approach shifts the focus from one
of comparative difference to pure repetition and the experience of intensities
to which this leads, demonstrating the non-formulaic nature of repetition in
series. Deleuze’s concept of becoming is used to explain the reader’s
creative involvement within a series and the rhizome is put forward as a metaphor
for the connectivity between volumes. This paper applies these ideas to a range
of contemporary French series for adolescents and shows how Deleuze can help
understand the mysterious appeal of series fiction and the intense experience
it provides for the reader.
ULF SCHÖNE, Stavanger University, Norway
Violets or Violence? – Anarchism in Children’s Literature
Many protagonists in children’s literature adopt a rebellious attitude.
But the interest of the paper lies not in heroes like Pippi Longstocking and
her peers, whose actions pose a mildly subversive challenge to the adult world
while leaving the overall value-system of society untouched. Instead the paper
takes a look at works that in some form or other seem to be influenced by or
give room to the more fundamental political notions of Anarchism. Tracing elements
of Anarchistic thought and ideals in works of Tove Jansson, T.H. White, Michael
de Larrabeiti and Joachim Ringelnatz, the paper establishes modes for displaying
this ideology in literature for children and juveniles, from the open propagation
of Anarchism to narrative illustration of it, from discourse about it to its
manifestation as Utopian escapism. The paper will furthermore discuss the implications
of this literature: How does the ideological interfere with the narrative? While
it can be shown that the element of Anarchism can be understood as a narrative
device, where does the boundary go to rejecting its use as indoctrination? And
what is to be learned about the nature of Anarchism from this children’s
literature?
KRISTEN SIPPER, University of Nottingham, England
The Development of the Child Hero in Children’s Fiction
Since the advent of children’s literature, child-characters have been
given a terribly important role in children’s narratives, often ‘saving’
those in danger around them. Interestingly, over the past several hundred years,
the role of the child hero has grown in importance, and the tasks they undertake
have increased repercussions. In early didactic narratives of the Georgian period,
child protagonists in the works of such authors as Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Sherwood,
and Sarah Trimmer are responsible for saving the souls of their fellow children
through the example they set to their peers. In later didactic Evangelical Tract
novels of the mid to late Victorian period, through their guileless innocence,
the child protagonists show the sinful adults around them the ways of Christ,
thus redeeming these adults. In some cases, the child heroes even show the corruption
of church leaders and put them back on a holy path. Modern children’s
literature shows an extreme progression of the importance of the child protagonist.
Works such as Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy and J.K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter books show children now being responsible for saving the entire
world and keeping order in the universe. This paper will explore the development
of the child hero, examining why this shift has taken place and its significance.
LIZ THIEL, Roehampton University, England
An Invitation to Explore: David Almond's Early Children's Texts and the Adolescent
Reader
David Almond's Skellig (1998) Kit's Wilderness (1999) and Heaven Eyes (2000),
approached sequentially, provide the reader with a gradual progression into
increasingly complex philosophical and critical thought. Underpinned to varying
degrees by a Blakean ethos of free thinking and heightened perception, they
firmly site the reader as interpreter and appear to be eminently suited to the
adolescent --- or precociously adolescent --- mind that is poised to 'think
about thinking' (Appleyard). This paper explores Almond's early texts and examines
the recurrent themes that expose their allegiance to Blake and postmodernism,
including the nature of truth, intertextuality and the playfulness of the literary
text. It concludes that although the three novels often display complex messages,
movement forward, for both characters and reader, is seemingly fundamental to
Almond's scheme.
