In this book, members of the ChiLPA Project (Children’s Literature: Pure and Applied) explore the children’s literature of several different cultures, ranging from ancient India, nineteenth century Russia, and the Soviet Union, to twentieth century Britain, America, Australia, Sweden, and Finland. The research covers not only the form and content of books for children, but also their potential social functions, especially within education. These two perspectives are brought together within a theory of children’s literature as one among other forms of communication, an approach that sees the role of literary scholars, critics and teachers as one of mediation. Part I deals with the way children’s writers and picturebook-makers draw on a culture’s available resources of orality, literacy, intertextuality, and image. Part II examines their negotiation of major issues such as the child adult distinction, gender, politics, and the Holocaust. Part III discusses children’s books as used within language education programmes, with particular attention to young readers’ pragmatic processing of differences between the context of writing and their own context of reading.

Table of Contents

Members of the ChiLPA Project, Åbo Akademi University ix•xii Introduction: Children’s literature as communication Roger D. Sell 1•26 Part I: Initiating: Resources at hand 27 Literacy and orality: The wise artistry of The Pañcatantra Niklas Bengtsson 29•37 Orality and literacy, continued: Playful magic in Pushkin’s Tale of Tsar Saltan Janina Orlov 39•53 Intertextualities: Subtexts in Jukka Parkkinen’s Suvi Kinos novels Kaisu Rättyä 55•70 Intertextualities, continued: The connotations of proper names in Tove Jansson Yvonne Bertills 71•83 The verbal and the visual: The picturebook as a medium Maria Nikolajeva 85•108 Part II: Negotiating: Issues examined 109 Growing up: The dilemma of children’s literature Maria Nikolajeva 111•136 Childhood: A narrative chronotope Rosemary Ross Johnston 137•158 Child-power? Adventures into the animal kingdom • The Animorphs series Maria Lassèn-Seger 159•176 Gender and beyond: Ulf Stark’s conservative rebellion Mia Österlund 177•199 Politics: Gubarev’s Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors Jenniliisa Salminen 201•212 The unspeakable: Children’s fiction and the Holocaust Lydia Kokkola 213•233 Part III: Responding: Pragmatic variables 235 Early immersion reading: The narrative mode and meaning-making Lydia Kokkola 237•262 Reader-learners: Children’s novels and participatory pedagogy Roger D. Sell 263•290 Primary-level EFL: Planning a multicultural fiction project Roger D. Sell 291•313 Secondary-level EFL: Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi Lilian Rönnqvist 315•331 Bilingualism, stories, new technology: The Fabula Project Viv K. Edwards 333•344 Subject index 345