Haven't you ever felt like there has to be more?: Identity, space and embodied cognition in young adult fiction

© 2017, Bononia University Press. The first part of title of the paper is a quotation from a young adult novel by Patrick Ness, More Than This (2013), in which the protagonist awakens, presumably after death, in a new place where he does not know the rules. Through exploring the unfamiliar space, the character gradually comes to insights about his true identity. The paper, based on recent studies in spatiality and cognitive narratology, focuses on the ways fiction for young readers evokes the sense of place and space that supports identity formation. Through a close reading of selected passages from texts describing characters' perception of unfamiliar space, the paper argues that fiction offers readers embodied experience of space and therefore of space-related identity

What is it Like to be a Child? Childness in the Age of Neuroscience

The title of this article alludes to the famous work that cognitive studies inevitably return to: “What is it like to be a bat?” by Thomas Nagel (1974). While it is possible to imagine what it might be like to be a bat, for instance, to fly, to hang upside down and to use echolocation, a bat's subjective perception is presumably so different from a human being's that it can never become a shared experience (see also Blackmore 2005, pp. 6-9). We cannot access the consciousness of a bat, or a cat, or a rat; we cannot even be sure that animals have consciousness, or whether some of them do while others don't. In 2012, a group of international scholars adopted The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, stating that all animals are sentient (Bekoff, 2012). While this is doubtless a decisive step for animal rights movement, from a philosophical point of view it is problematic. The most basic definition of consciousness includes the awareness of being sentient: does a bat know that it is a bat? Does a bat understand batness as a distinctive feature of selfhood

Recent trends in children's literature research: Return to the body

Twenty-first-century children's literature research has witnessed a material turn in strong response to the 1990s perception of childhood and the fictional child as social constructions. Cultural theories have generated fruitful approaches to children's fiction through the lenses of gender, class, race and sexual orientation, and psychoanalytically oriented theories have explored ways of representing childhood as a projection of (adult) interiority, but the physical existence of children as represented in their fictional worlds has been obscured by constructed social and psychological hierarchies. Recent directions in literary studies, such as ecocriticism, posthumanism, disability studies and cognitive criticism, are refocusing scholarly attention on the physicality of children's bodies and the environment. This trend does not signal a return to essentialism but reflects the complexity, plurality and ambiguity of our understanding of childhood and its representation in fiction for young audiences. This article examines some current trends in international children's literature research with a particular focus on materiality. </jats:p

Screening assays for primary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis in children presenting with suspected macrophage activation syndrome

BACKGROUND: Primary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) screening assays are increasingly being performed in patients presenting with macrophage activation syndrome (MAS). The objective of this study was to describe their diagnostic and prognostic relevance in children who had presented to paediatric rheumatology and had undergone investigative work up for MAS. METHODS: Data was obtained retrospectively from an existing protein screening assay database and patient records. Assays included: intracellular expression of perforin in CD56+ Natural Killer (NK) cells; CD107a Granule Release Assay (GRA) in response to PHA in NK cells, or anti-CD3 stimulation of CD8 lymphocytes; in males Signal Lymphocyte Activating Molecule Associated Protein (SAP), and X-linked Inhibitor of Apoptosis Protein (XIAP) expression. All assays, requested by paediatric rheumatology, of children who had undergone investigative work up for MAS over a 5-year period (2007-2011) were included. RESULTS: Twenty-one patients (15 female), median age 6.5 years (range 0.6-16) with follow-up of 16 months (range 1-51), were retrospectively identified. At presentation, 3/21 (14 %) fulfilled HLH-2004 diagnostic criteria. At least one screening test result was available for all 21 patients; 7/21 (33 %) had at least one persistent screening test abnormality. Of this group 4/7 (57 %) died or required haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), compared to 1/14 (7 %) with no screening test abnormality (p = 0.025). 3/21 (14 %) ultimately had a diagnosis of primary HLH (two confirmed genetically; XIAP, familial HLH type 3, and one confirmed clinically). Of the six patients with abnormal GRA 5/6 had negative routine genetic results. CONCLUSIONS: Screening for primary HLH is warranted for children whose first rheumatological presentation is with MAS, since overall 14 % had an eventual diagnosis of primary HLH. A persistently abnormal GRA in patients presenting with MAS defines a high-risk group with poor outcome (mortality or HSCT), possibly due to as yet unidentified genetic cause

Children’s Stories Supporting the Development of Critical Literacy and Intercultural Understanding

This chapter examines the possibilities of applying children’s storybooks in supporting the development of critical literacy as well as intercultural understanding. Valuing and supporting children’s reading is known to provide understanding and empathy towards other human beings. The chapter focuses on theoretical notions related to promoting critical literacies through children’s storybooks, but also includes practical examples of utilizing multicultural children’s stories. The chapter introduces different strategies that parents and teachers can use to support the development of critical literacy, including critical thinking and understanding multiple perspectives. Focus is especially on young children, because they already are capable of moving beyond what is in front of them on the page. Since children’s storybooks offer possibilities for readers to question implicit assumptions about self and others, books can support readers in becoming more culturally aware and sensitive. Consequently, reading storybooks can affect children’s intercultural understanding, and the role of storybooks in children’s moral development – both shaping and changing attitudes – should be seen as transformative.Peer reviewe

Organizing Shared Digital Reading in Groups: Optimizing the Affordances of Text and Medium

Children develop their language when they explore and talk about literary texts. In this study, we explore the design of shared digital reading as a basis for critical reflection on the reading situation in an institutional context with its given opportunities and limitations. We examine six videotaped readings of one specific picture book app, with a focus on the strategies used by teachers in early childhood education and care institutions to control children’s access to the medium and the types of verbal engagement (about the story and about the medium) that are generated by these different strategies. We use qualitative and quantitative analysis of video data. A qualitative categorization of the readings reveals the strategies Show, Show & Share, and Share. In analyzing the participants’ verbal and multisensory engagement, we find that the Show strategy generates more utterances, especially about the story, as well as more time spent on dialogue.publishedVersio

Meaning-making from wordless (or nearly wordless) picturebooks: what educational research expects and what readers have to say

Wordless (or nearly wordless) picturebooks are intriguing in terms of how readers make meaning from them. This article offers a conceptualization of existing studies in the field of education that use wordless picturebooks with young readers. While some of these studies contribute to understanding meaning-making, the pragmatic use of wordless picturebooks often does not take account of their particular nature and of the heightened role of the reader, leading to a mismatch between what the picturebook expects from the implied reader and the researchers’ expectations of what ‘real’ readers must do with these books. By highlighting observations from children’s literature scholarship and reader-response studies, this article aims to encourage a more interdisciplinary understanding of meaning-making. It also seeks to persuade educational researchers and mediators to consider investigative approaches that are not based on verbalization but are more in tune with the invitations that wordless picturebooks extend to young readers

Rich pictures for stakeholder dialogue:A polyphonic picture book

We describe the design and use of a ‘polyphonic picture book’ for engaging stakeholders and research participants with findings from an interdisciplinary project investigating how UK citizens create and manage online identities at three significant life transitions. The project delivered socio-cultural and technical findings to inform policy-making and service innovation for enhancing digital literacy in online self-representation. The picture book presented findings through multi-perspectival, fictional scenarios about experiences of life transition. We describe our use of the book with our stakeholders in five workshop settings and our evaluation of the visual format for fostering stakeholder dialogue around the findings and their transferability. This paper contributes methodological insights about using visual storytelling to scaffold interpretative, dialogical contexts of research engagement

Stories of Value: The Nature of Money in Three Classic British Picture Books

Much of the literature on children’s economic socialisation focuses on exploring three questions: at what point do children acquire a “good grasp of economic reality,” do they become “responsible economic agents,” and do they need to be considered “economically literate” (Furnham, 2014, p. 118)? These concerns often imply a pragmatic understanding of money as a quantitative commodity that facilitates transaction, accounting, and the storing of value (Belk & Wallendorf, 1990). Yet they also imply an appreciation of what is considered to be ‘literate’ and ‘responsible’ behaviour, supposedly informed by a ‘good grasp’ of ‘reality’. Finally, it assumes unproblematic knowledge of what is ‘valuable.

Disrupting aetonormativity : involving children in the writing of literature for publication

Literary criticism of children’s literature asserts a one-directional view of power, with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using ‘aetonormativity’– adult perceptions of normal patterning children’s literature – this paper explores what happens to aetonormativity when children co-construct publishable fiction (Nikolajeva 2010). We analyse drama and creative writing workshops run with 8 to 11-year-old children by Story Makers Press, a University-based publishing company representing marginalised children’s voices by involving them in writing processes. Our analysis shows how whilst we were interested in developing the story of the protagonist, the children drew upon their “funds of knowledge” (Moll 1992) to develop a gaming narrative. The effect was twofold: we constructed a “hybrid” text (Bakhtin 1986) which, unlike GameLit, explores the relationship between the protagonist and gaming; and a discourse counter to negative adult portrayals of gaming. As the children became invested in the fiction, they became effective editors and revisions were taken on board by the editorial team. The paper concludes that involving children in writing children’s literature can result in texts which disrupt aetonormativity by representing lived experiences. The paper also acknowledges that that further research is needed into how other children read and respond to texts co-constructed with children