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Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children
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Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children

A special issue of Literature (ISSN 2410-9789).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2024) | Viewed by 11462

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sarah Hoem Iversen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Language, Literature, Mathematics and Interpreting, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5020 Bergen, Norway
Interests: constructions of childhood; children’s nonfiction; nonfiction picturebooks; children’s dictionaries
Dr. Brianne Jaquette

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Language, Literature, Mathematics and Interpreting, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5020 Bergen, Norway
Interests: children’s literature; young adult literature; genre studies; gender studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute a paper to the Special Issue “Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children”.

“Childhood” and “children’s literature” are both complex categories that are difficult to define and delimitate. As Anna Davin (1999: 15) has observed, as an analytical term, “childhood” is problematic because it is “too familiar”, too intimately a part of universal human experience. Scholars have debated the nature of children’s literature for decades. Famously, Peter Hollindale (1997) argued that categorizing children’s literature meant accepting a paradox, in that such texts are characterized both by their (child) readership and the “childness” of the text. However, rather than focusing on defining the concepts of “childhood” and “children’s literature”, the present Special Issue aims to investigate the ways in which texts aimed at children and/or are read by children and young people present, construct, and negotiate different conceptions of children and childhood. The Guest Editors invite contributions from scholars in the fields of literature, children’s literature, and childhood studies.

It is well established that children’s literature carries explicit and implicit ideologies (Knowles & Malmkjær 1996). However, children’s literature scholarship in recent decades has contested the assumption that child readers passively receive the ideologies embedded in the books they read. Recent studies have also presented more nuanced views of the history of children’s literature as a progression from “instruction to delight”. For example, Louise Joy (2019) posits that children’s literature works on both an aesthetic and didactic level, with critical reading as “a united kind of work and play” (Joy 2019: 59). The ways in which the critical child reader might be invited to engage with the text and with ideological constructions of childhood also warrant further investigation.

As there are still comparatively fewer studies on nonfiction as opposed to fiction (Goga, Iversen and Teigland 2021), this Special Issue particularly encourages papers investigating constructions of children and childhood in nonfiction texts, as well as comparative analyses of fiction and nonfiction, and investigations of hybrid texts which do not easily fall into either category.

So far there have been no Special Issues devoted to children’s and young adult literature in Literature. This Special Issue aims to investigate constructions of childhood and the child reader in texts for children and young people, focusing in particular on ideological constructions and on nonfiction texts.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Constructions of the implied reader in texts for children;
  • Childhood studies and (children’s and young adult) literature;
  • Comparative perspectives on childhood constructions in fiction and nonfiction texts for children;
  • Child constructions across different modes and genres of children’s texts;
  • The intersections between childhood, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, and race;
  • Comparative perspectives on childhood in texts from different times, cultures, and languages;
  • Childhood in translated children’s texts;
  • Childhood constructions in crossover literature;
  • Childhood constructions and dual address in literature;
  • Childhood in child-authored texts;
  • The critical child reader;
  • Childhood and posthumanism in literature;
  • Visual constructions of childhood in children’s fiction and nonfiction;
  • Constructions of childhood and adolescence in young adult literature;
  • Stylistic/linguistic perspectives on childhood and ideology in children’s texts.

Abstract submission deadline: 1 December 2023
Full manuscript deadline: 31 March 2024

References

Davin, A. What is a child? In Questioning Childhood: Children, Parents and the State; Fletcher, A., Hussey, S., Eds.; Manchester University Press: Manchester, UK, 1999; pp. 15–36.

Goga, N.; Iversen S.H.; Teigland, S. Verbal and Visual Strategies in Nonfiction Picturebooks; Universitetsforlaget: Oslo, Norway, 2021.

Hollindale, P. Signs of Childness in Children’s Books; Thimble Press: Jackson, MS, USA, 1997.

Joy, L. Literature's Children: The Critical Child and the Art of Idealization; Bloomsbury Academic: London, UK, 2019.

Knowles, M.; Malmkjær, K. Language and Control in Children's Literature; Routledge: London, UK, 1996.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of about 250 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors ([email protected] and [email protected]) or to the Literature Editorial Office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Sarah Hoem Iversen
Dr. Brianne Jaquette
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Literature is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • childhood
  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • children’s literature
  • children’s texts
  • YA literature
  • ideological constructions
  • child reader

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Published Papers (11 papers)

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10 pages, 222 KiB  
Article
Loving the Sport, Loving the Self: Devotion and Defiance in Furia
by Wendy J. Glenn
Literature 2024, 4(4), 296-305; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040021 - 12 Dec 2024
Viewed by 266
Abstract
In the world of sports today, young people have access to models of women athletes who seem to have it all, women whose actions push on gendered assumptions of love and the associated roles of women as sacrificial and subservient. And yet, young [...] Read more.
In the world of sports today, young people have access to models of women athletes who seem to have it all, women whose actions push on gendered assumptions of love and the associated roles of women as sacrificial and subservient. And yet, young people, particularly young girls, wanting to navigate their worlds in ways that challenge conventional love, do not have the same power and privilege given their gender, age, and lack of financial autonomy. The young adult novel Furia invites young readers to evidence an adolescent character whose love of sport serves as a form of liberation from social constraints in a way that likely feels more resonant and doable, more real somehow. The protagonist’s engagement with and dedication to sport invite complications of ideological assumptions about love, particularly gendered narratives that position girls and women as bound by devotion This paper draws upon the youth lensand methods of critical context analysis to better understand how the protagonist is positioned as an athlete and a young woman and to offer interpretative thinking that explores how this title can help us (and young readers) think about love through the lens of sport. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
14 pages, 231 KiB  
Article
Creating “a Little Garden of Our Own”: Constructions of Childhood and Knowledge About Gardening in Frances Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) and Arthur Mee’s The Children’s Encyclopaedia (1910)
by Sarah Hoem Iversen and Brianne Jaquette
Literature 2024, 4(4), 262-275; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040019 - 28 Nov 2024
Viewed by 410
Abstract
Although there has been considerable previous scholarship on the garden and what it symbolises in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911), less attention has been paid to the act of gardening itself within the text. The present article reads this popular children’s [...] Read more.
Although there has been considerable previous scholarship on the garden and what it symbolises in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911), less attention has been paid to the act of gardening itself within the text. The present article reads this popular children’s novel in conjunction with Arthur Mee’s The Children’s Encyclopaedia (1910), which, while well-known in its time, does not have the classic status of The Secret Garden. Drawing on theory about the narrator–narratee relationship in children’s texts, this comparative analysis considers how knowledge about gardening is constructed and narrated in a work of fiction and a work of nonfiction, respectively, particularly in terms of how the child reader is addressed, constructed, and positioned. We investigate how constructions of childhood are linked to the concept of gardening, both mediated through books and the act of reading, and as an activity that children are invited to undertake. Both texts present knowledge about gardening as something which is constructed both through reading and studying and through practical experience. However, while in The Secret Garden, child characters co-construct knowledge more collaboratively, the adult narratee in The Children’s Encyclopaedia more strongly instructs the “young gardener”. The garden in both texts eventually becomes a way to socialise children; however, the act of gardening also allows a temporary freedom from those social roles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
15 pages, 1078 KiB  
Article
Side-Eye from the Side Kid: Child Sidekicks as Disciplinary Tools in Contemporary Video Games
by Emma Joy Reay
Literature 2024, 4(4), 247-261; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040018 - 31 Oct 2024
Viewed by 442
Abstract
In this article, I analyse the function of supporting child-characters in contemporary videogames. I integrate Stephen Zimmerly’s typology of sidekicks in Young Adult literature with critical writing on the ‘Daddening’ of videogames, a coinage that refers to the rise in the number of [...] Read more.
In this article, I analyse the function of supporting child-characters in contemporary videogames. I integrate Stephen Zimmerly’s typology of sidekicks in Young Adult literature with critical writing on the ‘Daddening’ of videogames, a coinage that refers to the rise in the number of videogames that centre on the filial bond between a father figure and a child. Bringing these ideas into conversation with each other allows me to expand Zimmerly’s sidekick typology to include the ‘Ludic Gateway’, the ‘Morality Certificate’, and the ‘Disciplinary Tool’. I explore each category in greater depth using two case studies: The Last of Us series (2012; 2014; 2020) and the God of War series (2008; 2018; 2022). These commercially successful, critically acclaimed franchises rely on young deuteragonists to humanize and redeem the gruff, aggressive, violent male player character. Furthermore, the child sidekicks also serve to regulate the player’s in-game behaviour by way of a parasocial relationship. Using a close reading approach, I demonstrate that the supporting child-characters function as meta-critical devices to discipline gaming communities and the video game medium itself. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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20 pages, 9303 KiB  
Article
Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature
by Emma-Louise Silva
Literature 2024, 4(4), 214-233; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016 - 27 Sep 2024
Viewed by 869
Abstract
For authors who revisit their experiences of childhood to write stories for young readers, imaginatively drawing on memories plays a prominent role in the creative process. Whereas connections between memories and narratives have featured in literary studies and children’s literature studies, the unfolding [...] Read more.
For authors who revisit their experiences of childhood to write stories for young readers, imaginatively drawing on memories plays a prominent role in the creative process. Whereas connections between memories and narratives have featured in literary studies and children’s literature studies, the unfolding of negotiations between memory and imagination as authors create narratives of life writing is underexplored. This article examines how negotiations of memory and imagination unfold on paper during the writing processes for Roald Dahl’s Boy (1984), David Almond’s Counting Stars (2000), and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014). While positioning itself in the field of cognitive literary studies and the archival study of creative writing processes, this article aims to generate insights on the reconstructive approach to memory, which considers episodic remembering as imagining the past. By transposing the study of the dynamics of writing processes, or genetic criticism, to children’s literature, I explore notes, mindmaps, manuscripts, and typescripts held at the archives of Dahl, Almond, and Woodson to chart how they imaginatively incorporate memories of their youth into their life writing. As such, this research informs understandings of the narrative genesis of the authors’ works, while drawing on the manifestations of their literary creativity in an attempt to broaden knowledge regarding memory and imagination. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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13 pages, 302 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Agential Child in Death-Themed Picturebooks: A Comparative Analysis across Cultures
by Cheng-Ting Chang
Literature 2024, 4(3), 184-196; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030014 - 12 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1002
Abstract
The status of adults and children in children’s literature is a complex, long-debated issue. Marah Gubar introduced the kinship model, challenging the notion of children as voiceless and emphasizing their agency as human beings. This study argues that the model can serve as [...] Read more.
The status of adults and children in children’s literature is a complex, long-debated issue. Marah Gubar introduced the kinship model, challenging the notion of children as voiceless and emphasizing their agency as human beings. This study argues that the model can serve as a fruitful framework for examining the representation of children in death-themed picturebooks because the phenomenon of death places children and adults in a relatively equal position and implies similarities between them. It analyzes 11 picturebooks featuring agential child protagonists and published in the UK, the US, Japan, and Taiwan. The analysis is directed at four representations: the independent child, the atomized child, the helpful child, and the analogous child and adult. Each exploration describes whether and how the texts illustrate the model’s key points: (1) a child’s voice and agency; (2) the relatedness, connection, and similarity between children and adults; and (3) the gradual, erratic, and variable nature of development from childhood to adulthood. The findings highlight the heterogeneity of agential children across cultures and suggest that scrutinizing childhood requires engagement with adulthood. This perspective inspires us to reconsider the adult-child dichotomy and expand our imagination of what children can be across cultures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
12 pages, 6293 KiB  
Article
Econormative Childhoods in Wimmelbooks on the Four Seasons: Analysis of Central European Wordless Informational Picturebooks
by Krzysztof Rybak
Literature 2024, 4(3), 172-183; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030013 - 31 Jul 2024
Viewed by 905
Abstract
More and more informational picturebooks on environmental topics have been published in recent years, many focusing on the inevitable climate change. Conversely, there is still a tendency in contemporary picturebooks to represent the climate traditionally, irrespective of actual climate change. A particularly interesting [...] Read more.
More and more informational picturebooks on environmental topics have been published in recent years, many focusing on the inevitable climate change. Conversely, there is still a tendency in contemporary picturebooks to represent the climate traditionally, irrespective of actual climate change. A particularly interesting case is the representation of the seasons, especially in books aimed at the youngest ‘readers’, such as wimmelbooks. Not only are they crucial for developing emergent and visual literacy, but they also contain normative images that constitute a prototype for the child. The ‘norms’ picturebooks present are based on the authors’ ideologies that constitute all informational picturebooks as their authors interpret facts. Hence, this article aims to analyse the visual strategies used and the ideologies expressed by wimmelbooks from Poland and Germany in representing the seasons (Marcin Strzembosz’s Jaki to miesiąc? [2002] and Ali Mitgutsch’s Mein Wimmel-Bilderbuch: Frühling, Sommer, Herbst und Winter [2007], among others). The preliminary research shows that the authors seem to propose traditional, idyllic, ecologically normative images of the environment, which I propose to call econormative (inspired by the word ‘aetonormative’), such as snowy winters, sunny summers, etc.; hence, wimmelbooks seem to assent to stereotypical depictions of the seasons associated with the notion of ideal childhoods set in econormative environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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12 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
Children’s Nonfiction, Biography, and Their Responsibilities to Children
by Joe Sutliff Sanders
Literature 2024, 4(3), 160-171; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030012 - 30 Jul 2024
Viewed by 765
Abstract
A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres [...] Read more.
A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres of children’s nonfiction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
13 pages, 1779 KiB  
Article
Sámi on Display: Sámi Representations in an Early Nonfiction Book for Children
by Inger-Kristin Larsen Vie
Literature 2024, 4(3), 147-159; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030011 - 27 Jun 2024
Viewed by 795
Abstract
Lisbeth Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook En lappefamilie: tekst og bilder fra Nordland (A Lappish family: text and pictures from Nordland) from 1905 is one of the first Norwegian nonfiction picturebooks for children about the life of Sámi. It contains Bergh’s own illustrations [...] Read more.
Lisbeth Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook En lappefamilie: tekst og bilder fra Nordland (A Lappish family: text and pictures from Nordland) from 1905 is one of the first Norwegian nonfiction picturebooks for children about the life of Sámi. It contains Bergh’s own illustrations and text passages in Norwegian, English, and German, which signals that the book addresses a national and international audience. Simultaneously, the book is published in an era characterized by an increasing interest in indigenous tourism, demonstrated through the popularity of world exhibitions and «human zoos». In this article, I explore Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook in the light of “human zoos” and “living exhibitions” at the beginning of the 1900s and how her book alludes to the depiction of the Sámi for entertainment and information purposes. My close reading shows how the book reflects the categorization and systematization of the world and of exotic ethnic groups at the time. Furthermore, the reading confirms the book’s very distinctive position in Norwegian children’s literature history, and how it may have acquired a particular role in the promotion of Norwegian tourism at the beginning of the 20th century. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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12 pages, 244 KiB  
Article
Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Narrative Fallibility, and the Young Adult Reader
by Jessica Allen Hanssen
Literature 2024, 4(2), 135-146; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020010 - 27 May 2024
Viewed by 1975
Abstract
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon presents a remarkably complex narrator, 15-year-old Christopher Boone. Due to his implied autism spectrum condition, Christopher is possibly the ultimate in “reliable” narrators: he struggles to articulate emotions and is incapable [...] Read more.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon presents a remarkably complex narrator, 15-year-old Christopher Boone. Due to his implied autism spectrum condition, Christopher is possibly the ultimate in “reliable” narrators: he struggles to articulate emotions and is incapable of telling or understanding lies. His point of view (POV) is an extreme form of first-person limited, with Christopher at times seeming (or even yearning) to be more computer than human. The limitations of Christopher’s experience are reflected in his narrative self-presentation, and while, ordinarily, these would damage any sort of achieved authority, they instead underscore the book’s powerful thematic messages. Christopher’s narrative fallibility echoes the developmental stage of its crossover young adult (YA) audience: Curious Incident works with fallibility to establish a strong narrative voice that inspires an empathetic connection between Christopher and his implied reader. This article therefore considers how narrative fallibility is linked to constructions of adolescence in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and further explores the relationship between the narrator and the implied reader(s). Positioned within narratology-based theories and secondary research on Haddon and representations of neurodiversity in YA literature, it provides guidance for teachers and scholars who might question the value of authenticity in this or similar novels. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
14 pages, 3912 KiB  
Article
Set Moves: Constructions of Travel in Commercial Games for Children
by Melissa Jenkins
Literature 2024, 4(2), 87-100; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020007 - 9 May 2024
Viewed by 1110
Abstract
During the long nineteenth century, Western publics experienced the invention and proliferation of commercial games for children. Card games, board games, and other parlor games were no longer for adults only; these new offerings formalized some aspects of what it meant for a [...] Read more.
During the long nineteenth century, Western publics experienced the invention and proliferation of commercial games for children. Card games, board games, and other parlor games were no longer for adults only; these new offerings formalized some aspects of what it meant for a child to engage in play. Many games centered travel, becoming sites for children to simulate adult agency in movement through space. This paper examines the stories told by narrative card games and board games about travel, especially travel within and between urban centers. The games present the city as microcosm of the world. Child players are invited to construct multiple national and ethnic identities as they pretend to be city travelers. The games attempt to teach children, and their caregivers, how to travel. I argue that the structures and aims of the games evolve over time, keeping pace with new mores surrounding work and leisure travel. I also argue for connections between games and the “set moves” of narrative fiction and theatre. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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14 pages, 233 KiB  
Essay
How the Character of the Narrator Constructs a Narratee and an Implied Reader in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights
by Richard Grange
Literature 2024, 4(2), 122-134; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020009 - 24 May 2024
Viewed by 968
Abstract
The third-person omniscient narrator of fiction texts for children holds the ability to access characters’ thoughts, fly where they will within the story, and interact with time and tense. Philip Pullman characterises this kind of narrator as a multiscient sprite, not a human [...] Read more.
The third-person omniscient narrator of fiction texts for children holds the ability to access characters’ thoughts, fly where they will within the story, and interact with time and tense. Philip Pullman characterises this kind of narrator as a multiscient sprite, not a human seeing and telling, but something else which possesses unhuman-like qualities. This paper uses an analysis of the narrator’s voice, character, and choices to access two other characters created by the story being told—the narratee and the implied reader, both of whom may well be thought of as child characters produced by the text. A profile of these two products is then presented. Through a close textual analysis, which draws out untagged parts of Northern Light’s narrator’s speech, an examination of the kinds of characters the narratee, and implied reader could be seen to be is gathered. The narrator’s ability to intensely empathise with characters is passed onto the narratee and also normalised by aspects of the story, including the alethiometer, a device from the created world of the story which is imbued with strikingly similar qualities to the narrator. Lyra, the book’s protagonist, and the instrument interact with each other in a manner akin to the narrator and narratee, both having an agency which the implied reader could be bestowed with from reading the text. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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