Search Results (8)

The image of the bear and its relationship to the human undergoes many representations in children’s literature. Their bodies range from cute and squishable teddy bears to non-fiction representations of wild bears. For example, the lone polar bear, a popular visual device for expressing the “slow violence” of climate change, coined by Rob Nixon in 2011. This gray area then invites one to consider how these two opposing states influence one another in the context of conversations around climate change. Given the widespread adoption of the polar bear as an emblem of climate change, this article addresses how polar bear imagery is translated into modern children’s literature when it often draws on cute aesthetics. Cuteness then calls into question how ‘real’ bears have been reimagined into fictional settings and whether relationships between child and bear can provide commentary on inspiring environmental activism. I explore Hannah Gold’s The Last Bear and its sequel, Finding Bear, as borderline ecopedagogical texts which highlight the tension created when a typically cute subject is used to encourage environmental activism amongst its younger readerships. Full article

Rob Nixon in his 2011 book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor writes “[i]n a world permeated by insidious, yet unseen or imperceptible violence, imaginative writing can help make the unapparent appear” (p. 15). Nixon talks about the power of literature to render spectacular environmental violence which has become mundane and thus largely invisible. He points to the writing of Kenyan environmentalist and politician Wangari Maathai as work which captures the notion of slow violence. In her writing, Maathai creates the sense of urgency that Greta Gaard argues is a key boundary condition for an ecopedagogy of children’s literature. This article explores seven illustrated biographies of Maathai. The article interrogates the extent to which the books capture what Rob Nixon describes as “slow violence”, that is violence that occurs slowly, over time, and which is often overlooked. The article also introduces the term precarious progress to describe the fragile nature of the change initiated after slow violence. Finally, the article also draws on Val Plumwood’s writing on place attachment and “shadow places” to explore how the Kenyan landscape is depicted as not mere object but subject in these texts and the way in which they work to foster a consciousness of place in their child readers. Full article

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

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

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 study examined the eye movement patterns of 317 elementary students across reading conditions (audio-assisted reading (AR) and reading-only (R)) and text types (fiction and non-fiction) and identified eye movement parameters that predict their literal comprehension (LC) and inferential comprehension (IC). Participants, randomly assigned to either reading condition and either text type, answered questions assessing their LC and IC. Average fixation duration (AFD), total fixation duration (TFD), and scanpath length were used as eye movement parameters. The main effects of age were observed on all parameters, along with interaction effects between age and reading condition on TFD and scanpath length. These results indicate that children employ different reading strategies, depending on reading modalities and text types. When controlling for age, TFD had a positive impact on the LC of both text types in the AR, while in the R, it had a negative effect on the IC of both text types. Longer scanpaths predicted the IC of fiction in the AR; the LC and IC of non-fiction under the AR; and the LC of non-fiction within the R. AFD had a negative influence on the IC of fiction in the AR, as well as on the LC and IC of non-fiction in the AR, and the LC of non-fiction under the R. These findings highlight the importance of selecting appropriate reading strategies, based on reading modality and text type, to enhance reading comprehension. This study offers guidance for educators when providing reading instruction to school-age children. Full article

This study focuses on the development of executive functions in preschool children during a series of science activities. A longitudinal play-based learning intervention was designed and implemented following the design of an educational experiment. Data were collected through visual ethnography in hot situations with adult supervision. Results show how entwined the concepts of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility are within young children’s development. The development of cognitive flexibility or attention shifting readily occurred when there were fictive characters (such as the king and his royal family), but changing perspective toward a nonfictive environment (i.e., taking other children’s perspectives) was a more difficult and time-consuming process. This process began in an individual perspective and expanded to acknowledging others’ perspectives, then moved toward creating common perspectives or alternative narratives. Results show that science activities can be a bridge for preschool children to transfer their use of executive functions, from fairytales and games toward everyday tasks. Full article

In literary narratives by Nava Semel (1954–2017) and Etgar Keret (b. 1967), both Israeli children of Holocaust survivors, readers encounter the kinds of searching questions about inheriting the burden of traumatic inheritance, witnessing, and postmemory frequently intrinsic to second-generation literature in other national contexts. However, their works are further distinguished by acute examinations that probe the moral fabric of Israeli society itself, including dehumanization of the enemy through slogans and other debased forms of language and misuses of historical memory. In addition, their fiction measures the distance between the suffering and pain of intimate family memory (what Semel once dubbed their “private Shoah”) and ceremonial, nationalistic forms of Holocaust memory, and the apartness felt by the children of survivors who sense themselves somehow at odds with their society’s heroic values. Semel’s numerous articles, and fiction as well as nonfiction books, frequently address second and third-generation trauma, arguably most impressively in her harrowing five-part novel And the Rat Laughed (2001) that spans 150 years but most crucially juxtaposes the experiences of a “hidden child” in a remote wartime Polish village repeatedly raped with that of her grandchild writing a dutiful report for her class in contemporary Israel. Elsewhere, in a distant future, a bewildered but determined anthropologist is set on assembling a scientific report with coherent meaning from the fragmented “myths” inherited from the barbaric past. Over the years, Keret (generally known more for whimsical and surreal tales) has often spoken in interviews as well as his memoir about being raised by survivors. “Siren”, set in a Tel Aviv high school, is one of the most acclaimed of Keret’s realist stories (and required reading in Israeli high schools), raises troubling questions about Israeli society’s official forms of Holocaust mourning and remembrance and individual conscience. It is through their portrayals of the cognitive and moral struggles of children and adolescents, the destruction of their innocence, and gradual awakening into compassionate awareness that Semel and Keret most shine, each unwavering in preserving the Shoah’s legacy as a form of vigilance against society’s abuses, whether toward “internal” or “external” others. Full article