Att känna sig som en läsare: Läsa-själv-böcker och lättläst i Barnbiblioteket Saga under 1940-talet

Theme: The Children’s Library Saga and the Swedish Teachers’ Magazine’s Publishing House. Logo: The Swedish Institute for Children's Books Feeling Like a Reader: Independent Readers and Easy Readers in Barnbiblioteket Saga during the 1940s In 1935, Signe Wranér succeeded Amanda Hammarlund as editor of the book series Barnbiblioteket Saga at Svensk läraretidnings förlag, initiating a shift in the publication profile. Following Annette Wannamaker and Jennifer Miskec, this article explores the development of “Independent Readers” and “Easy Readers” in the series during the 1940s. Our conclusions are that the publishing house focused on two key approaches: linguistic adaptation, exemplified by Ingrid Wallerström, and psychological alignment, as seen in works by Kaj Juel Nielsen and Bodil Farup. These books featured simplified language, larger text, and thematic affiliation with contemporary views on child psychology and pedagogy – empowering the reader on a formal as well as a thematic level. The study also shows that this part of the book series was aimed at both the youngest schoolchildren and pupils in special education, blurring the lines between Independent Readers and Easy Readers. By analyzing books, correspondence, and manuscripts, the study contextualizes these publications within historical debates on education and children's literature, offering new insights into the history of Swedish children’s literature

Intertwined Messages: Aesthetic and Didactic Aspects of Dual-Language Sámi Picturebooks

 Theme: Multilingualism and Children's Literature. Ill. Henry Lyman Saÿen - Child Reading (1915–1918). Smithsonian American Art Museum, object number 1968.19.11. This article focuses on aesthetic and didactic aspects of literary multilingualism and the interaction between these aspects in two contemporary dual-language picturebooks with Sámi motifs and characters. Lilli, áddjá, ja guovssahas/Lilli, farfar och norrskenet (Lilly, Grandpa and the Northern Lights, 2020), written by Elin Marakatt and illustrated by Anita Midbjer, and Gájuoh muv! Gïjrra Almien jah Enoken luvnnie/Rädda mig: Vår hos Almmie och Enok (Save me: Spring at Almmie and Enok’s, 2021), written by Sophia Rehnfjell and illustrated by Inga-Wiktoria Påve, are intended for 3–7-year-olds and combine a Sámi language and Swedish. The analyses show the aesthetic and didactic interplay between verbal and visual elements. The insertion of North Sámi words in an otherwise Swedish text can highlight culture, traditional beliefs, and history, and the Ume Sámi glossaries can be used to talk about the illustrations and learn words pertaining to reindeer husbandry and life in Sápmi. The vocabulary has a didactic function, while the literary text and the illustrations tell stories about the Sámi peoples, thus being both aesthetic and didactic. Literary multilingualism is teamed with didactics and Sámi aesthetics to support language acquisition, to depict and to make visible Sámi culture and Sámi peoples to in-group as well as out-group readers

Underhållning på rätt sätt: Bokserien Stjärnböckerna och Svensk läraretidnings förlag som litterära vägledare

Theme: The Children’s Library Saga and the Swedish Teachers’ Magazine’s Publishing House. Logo: The Swedish Institute for Children's Books Entertainment the Right Way: The Book Series Stjärnböckerna and Svensk läraretidnings förlag as Literary Guides Stjärnböckerna is a book series for teenagers that was published by Svensk läraretidnings förlag 1937­­–1950. This article investigates the launch of the book series in 1937, the content of the first four books, their reception and the marketing of the book series, with the aim to gain a deeper understanding of how the publisher performed literary value. The study draws on theories about literary value and on Laura J. Miller’s concept reluctant capitalists, in order to understand the idealistic stance that the publishing house took towards their enterprise. The book series was launched as entertainment reading and as a counterweight to other literature that, at the time, was conceived of as being of bad quality and misleading for young readers. The debates specifically targeted crime magazines and romance stories from tabloids for, among other things, containing exaggerated violence and immoral values. The article shows that the ambition was to distribute the publishing house’s definition of literary value to readers, adult caretakers as well as critics by combining seemingly contradictory value regimes: one that underscores literature as entertainment, and one that aims to provide quality literature by creating a distance to contemporary popular entertainment. In the process of expressing its stance in the debate about so called bad literature for young readers, the publishing house reinforced its own brand as a trustworthy literary gatekeeper

Sean P. Connors and Roberta Seelinger Trites, Neoliberalism and Young Adult Literature: Exceptionalism, Exploitation, and Erasure

Review/Recensio

Undogmatic Re(ve)lations : Eva Lindström’s Picturebooks and the Animal-Human Gaze

Theme: Dog The Swedish illustrator and author Eva Lindström is an explorer of relationships – between human beings, animals, and the outside world. Her relational storyworld is inhabited by a host of humans and animals and things. No essential difference can be seen in her work between human and animal characters in terms of agency and subjectivity, yet the animal-human nexus allows Lindström to explore relational themes in depth and with great economy. The theoretical framing of my reading of two of her picturebooks – Musse (My Dog Mouse, 2016) and Lunds hund (Mr. Krup's Pup, 2013) – derives from Martin Buber’s classic work of relational theology, I and Thou (1923), and from a few passages in Jacques Derrida’s foundational work in Animal studies, The Animal That Therefore I Am (1997). These seminal works in Animal studies are, furthermore, discussed and nuanced with the help of John Berger’s and Donna Haraway’s contributions to the field. My thesis is that Lindström’s visual representations offer a complement and posthumanist corrective to Buber’s and Derrida’s fundamentally human-centered systems of thought. The pictures – as well as the sparse, precise words – decenter the human and focus on animal-human relationships. In so doing, Lindström peels away “the crust of thinghood,” to use Buber’s term. Finally, the animal-human gaze is essential to my discussion; the way in which Lindström’s characters (human and animal) look (or avoid looking) at each other is revelatory. And while the human and animal gaze for both Buber and Derrida is a sign of human power and indicative of self-recognition/reve­lation, the direction and meaning of the gaze in Lindström’s art also points towards the reciprocity of common creaturehood

Introduktion: Flerspråkighet och barnlitteratur – nya perspektiv

 Theme: Multilingualism and Children's Literature. Ill. Henry Lyman Saÿen - Child Reading (1915–1918). Smithsonian American Art Museum, object number 1968.19.11. Introduktion: Flerspråkighet och barnlitteratur – nya perspekti

Mer enn helt og bestevenn? : Hundens rolle i relasjon med barn i barnelitteratur om andre verdenskrig

Theme: Dog More than a Hero and a Best Friend? The Dog’s Role in a Relationship with a Child in Children’s Literature on the Second World War The aim of this article is to analyze representations of dogs in relationships with children in children’s literature set during the Second World War. Placing the article in a posthumanism tradition, we use literary comparison and modality analysis to reveal underlying anthropocentric ideology in a genre of literature that tends to convey moral and ethical values related to human rights and value. Drawing upon theory about companion animals and war memorial literature, we find that the dogs from the selected material of Italian and Swedish children’s books tend to be either heroes, loving companions or initiators for the children’s development, or several of these roles at once. Our analysis also indicates that war as a backdrop makes these roles possible – and impacts them in specific ways. The dog might be seen as a hero to the protagonist child in the story, as a national hero important to the war effort, or both. Since the parents of the child often are unable to fulfil their roles as caregivers and protectors due to the war, the dog seems to be the natural substitute. The dogs are also in different ways helping the child protagonists cope with the traumatic experiences related to war. Our closing discussion highlights how these roles in many ways continue to maintain an anthropocentric world view, but we suggest other ways that war memorial literature for children, through the use of certain literary devices, can be used to support the readers’ critical thinking about species’ relationships and about how not only humans are affected by war

Introduction: Motherhood and Mothering

Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén Introduction: Motherhood and Motherin

Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen och M.O. Grenby (red.), Transnational Books for Children 1750–1900

Review/Recensio

The Sounds of the Woods and Mountains: Human Voice, Nature Sounds, and Music in Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja Rövardotter and Maria Parr’s Tonje Glimmerdal

The article takes the form of a comparative analysis of the soundscapes in two classic Nordic novels: Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja Rövardotter (1981; Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter) and Maria Parr’s Tonje Glimmerdal (2009; Astrid the Unstoppable). The aim of the analysis is to explore the role sound plays in the novels’ place-making, and how place is conceptualized. Drawing on theory of place and topoi (Bakhtin; Cresswell; Curtius) and inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, I analyze cyclical and linear sounds. As the study shows, we find spatial rhythms in both novels, and in both there is an interplay between the human voice, nature sounds, and music, but the sounds are orchestrated in very different ways. Overall, the soundscape in Lindgren’s novel is more cacophonic, while it comes across as harmonious in Parr’s. Furthermore, based on the analysis and academic discussions on the novels as pastorals, I argue that Lindgren constructs a more literary and static place or topos while the place-making in Parr’s novel is more dynamic and in line with current concepts of place (e.g. Cresswell)