Att förhålla sig till ovisshet i litteraturundervisningen : Litteraturdidaktiska perspektiv på Linda Bondestams klimatbilderbok Mitt bottenliv

Managing Uncertainty in the Literature Classroom: Linda Bondestam’s Climate Change Picturebook Mitt bottenliv in Literary Education Children’s literature on environmental matters puts great responsibility on its readers to solve future environmental problems. Similarly, in an educational context, there are underlying premises that the students should be fostered into environmental awareness, at the risk of climate fiction solely becoming “teaching aids”, providing clear-cut solutions to the climate crisis. In this article, I seek to address these premises by analysing Linda Bondestam’s climate picturebook Mitt bottenliv: Av en ensam axolotl (My Life at the Bottom: The Story of a Lonesome Axolotl, 2020) in relation to literary education. In Bondestam’s picturebook, human consumerism causes an apocalypse but an endangered axolotl survives and thrives. The aim of the article is to discuss the complexity of Mitt bottenliv in relation to literary education. In the analysis, the key concepts are “didactic gaps” (Beauvais) and “staying with the trouble” (Haraway). The article explores what it can entail to stay with the trouble in relation to uncertainty in literary education. Mitt bottenliv can hardly be said to provide clear-cut solutions for the climate crisis. Rather, the complexity of the picturebook creates an ambiguity in the didactic gaps, and an uncertainty to be managed within the context of literary education. This ambiguity enables the reader to stay with the trouble in relation to the picturebook as well as the environmental troubles we are facing, without placing the responsibility of the future upon the reader. Consequently, the article draws attention to the potential of complex picturebooks in literary education, as well as to literary education as a means of managing uncertainty

Mödrar som mördar: Mylingen, änglamakerskan och modrandet

Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén Mothers That Murder: The Myling, Baby Farmers, and Mothering In contemporary Swedish children’s literature, mylings and baby farmers make frequent appearances. A myling is the ghost of a murdered child, destined to haunt and expose its assassin. Baby farmers were women paid to take care of unwanted children but sometimes killed them, either directly or through neglect. Both motifs indirectly address issues of motherhood and mothering, and the aim of this article is to discuss how they are represented in children’s literature. In research about motherhood, being a mother is often distinguished from the act of mothering. Motherhood is associated with a biological discourse whilst mothering refers to social practices of care that are associated with the mother but may also be carried out by other people. Both mylings and baby farmers address this distinction but in various ways. In folklore about mylings, the biological mother is traditionally singled out as the infant’s killer. This misogynistic discourse is, to some extent, renegotiated in contemporary non-fictional works about Nordic mythology for children. In fictional works, though, the mother is still portrayed as the sole caregiver for the child and the only one to blame for its death, thus disregarding the distinction between motherhood and mothering. Baby farmers are neither mothers nor are they mothering. Children’s novels set in the past describe the baby farmer as part of a societal industry where a discrepancy between motherhood and mothering is displayed: children are born but not cared for. However, the burden of guilt is shared amongst various social actors, including the fathers. In Gothic fiction set in a contemporaneous society, the baby farmer reveals a deficit in mothering altogether and offers neglect – an anti-mothering – in its place

Introduktion till årgång 47

Introduktio

Elina Druker och Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (red.), Photography in Children’s Literature

Reivew/Recensio

Det som ikke vises : Om Busters mor i bok og på film

Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén That Which Is Not Shown: Buster’s Mother in the Book and on Screen This article is a study of mother characters in the stories about Buster Oregon Mortensen, as they are portrayed in books and on screen. The children’s book Busters verden (Buster’s World) by Bjarne Reuter was published in 1979 and it has later been adapted into two movies with different directors. I investigate the portrayal of Buster’s mother in the three versions of the story and how she changes as a character in the adaptations. Through adaptation analysis I explore the various expectations of her as a mother, and how her social circumstances affect her ability to protect and raise her children. By studying how Buster’s mother is portrayed in different media expressions produced over forty-two years, I demonstrate how each narrative addresses children regarding the topic of motherhood. In the book the mother is presented as a victim of abuse and violence who is exhausted and annoyed, while in the first film she is portrayed as a quiet figure who mostly remains a neutral character in the background, and in the second she is absent due to her own studies

Astrid Lindgren and the Nightingale’s Song

Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén This article analyzes the nightingale motif in Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s short story “Spelar min lind, sjunger min näktergal” (“My Nightingale is Singing”), first published in her collection Sunnanäng (The Red Bird, 1959). The lineage of the motif is traced back to ancient Greek folklore, where the nightingale’s lament symbolizes maternal grief over the loss of a child. It is argued that Lindgren’s story can be interpreted as a modern reimagining of a specific strand in the mythological tradition surrounding the rape of Philomela and the infanticide committed by Procne to avenge her sister. Lindgren alludes to a version of the story found in fable collections, which centers on the reunion of the two sisters after their metamorphosis into birds. In the Greek myth, especially as it was interpreted by Romantic writers, a bereaved mother is transformed into the nightingale, eternally lamenting her loss and thereby transfiguring human suffering into beauty. In Lindgren’s story, Malin longs to bring beauty to the bleak world of the orphanage, first miraculously causing a linden tree to grow in its yard, but ultimately giving her spirit to the tree, where it is heard in the song of a nightingale among its branches. “Spelar min lind, sjunger min näktergal” thus represents Lindgren’s innovative culmination of a long fable tradition with pre-classical origins, where the child becomes the agent of transformation

På vei mot et flerspråklig skolebibliotek

 Theme: Multilingualism and Children's Literature. Ill. Henry Lyman Saÿen - Child Reading (1915–1918). Smithsonian American Art Museum, object number 1968.19.11. Towards a Multilingual School Library The new curriculum for primary schools in Norway underlines that knowledge of several languages is a resource both in school and society, and that the pupils should experience this through their education. In this article we investigate the school library as a multilingual arena, based on a study with a linguistically and culturally diverse pupil group. The material contains observation data from library activities, such as book talks and reading aloud, a semi-structured interview with the school librarian, and photo documentation of the school library room. We base the analysis on an overall perspective on the school library as a schoolscape (Brown). Hence we are interested in the linguistic-visual interior of the school library, as well as the literary and pedagogical activities that take place there. The article investigates how language diversity emerges both in the school library’s semiotic landscape and in various reading activities. Overall, the analysis shows that linguistic diversity appears to be valued on a general level, but that the specific languages of the pupil and teacher groups are represented to a lesser degree in the schoolscape. The analysis also identifies a number of framework factors, including at system levels, such as access to multilingual literature, which clearly hinder the school librarian’s work in developing the library’s multilingual collection

Introduktion: ”Moderskap och modrande”

Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén Introduktion: "Moderskap och modrande

För finlandssvenska unga läsare, på deras språk: Värderingen av litterär flerspråkighet i recensioner av finlandssvenska ungdomsromaner under tidigt 2000-tal

 Theme: Multilingualism and Children's Literature. Ill. Henry Lyman Saÿen - Child Reading (1915–1918). Smithsonian American Art Museum, object number 1968.19.11. For Finland-Swedish Young Readers, in Their Language: The Evaluation of Literary Multilingualism in Reviews of Finland-Swedish Young Adult Novels from the Early 2000s The article is a study of the evaluation of literary multilingualism in reviews of Finland-Swedish YA novels from the early 2000s. It investigates the evaluation of multilingualism in the literary field and, furthermore, contributes to the field of research into children’s literature reviews. The material consists of reviews of Annika Luther’s Ivoria (2005) and Brev till världens ände (Letters to the end of the world, 2008), as well as of Marianne Backlén’s Kopparorm (Copper snake, 2008), in Finland-Swedish newspapers and periodicals. The novels all feature literary multilingualism, for example instances of Finnish, specific Finland-Swedish linguistic traits, and/or multilingual slang, and these features are discussed in the majority of the reviews. With a theoretical background in literary multilingualism studies, children’s literature research, and studies of literary reviews, and by using textual analysis, the article shows that classic questions regarding literary multilingualism, authenticity, and comprehensibility, as well as different readerships, feature heavily in the material. There are also new elements to the discussion regarding the temporal durability of literary multilingualism and the age gap between author and readers. The reviewers’ evaluation of literary multilingualism is mixed; however, literary multilingualism is recognized as a valuable and multifaceted literary device in Finland-Swedish YA literature of the early 2000s

Lonely Landscapes: Desire and Direction in the Writing of Anna-Liisa Haakana

Anna-Liisa Haakana is a Finnish novelist best known for her realistic stories set in Sápmi (better known in English by its colonial name “Lapland”) during the 1980s. Haakana’s teenage protagonists, Ykä in Ykä Yksinäinen (Ykä the Lonely, 1980) and Anitra in Ykköstyttö (Number One Girl, 1981), feel lonely and isolated despite being surrounded by their families. Loneliness, as Fay Alberti reminds us, is a social and cultural phenomenon which has its own history. In Haakana’s pre-internet novels, loneliness is mapped onto the northern landscape such that the protagonists’ perceptions of their homes are tinged with feelings of isolation. In this article, I investigate the links between the feelings of loneliness and landscape by drawing on Sara Ahmed’s work on queer orientations to examine the geo-spatial dimensions of loneliness. Although neither of the novels by Haakana examined here are romances per se, desire acts as a form of way-finding for both Ykä and Anitra. For both teens, feelings of love combined with the desire to care for someone vulnerable orient them towards their homes. To do so, they must move: stillness leads to feelings of loneliness and topophobia, but movement leads to feelings of purpose and topophilia