The present book is devoted to certain signs and symbols that help to create the national myth in the
literaturę far children and young people.
The first part contains legends and fairy tales conceming the heginnings of the Polish State, Polish
mountains, Silesia, and tales with a clearly regional bent, such as Kłopoty Kacperka góreckiego skrzata
('The Troubles of Kacperek, a mountain imp) by Zofia Kossak. These texts are addressed to the youngest
reader.
The second part deals with books for older children, which are often texts of high artistic value
conceming, for example, the mythology of the Polish manor house, the loss of a horae in the Eastem
borderland, or the model of heroic patriotism. In that chapter, the favourite genres of children’s literaturę
have been pointed out to.
The third part is devoted to the following four classical books for young people: Henryk Sienkiewicz ’ s
W pustyni i w puszczy {In Woodland and Wasteland), Kazimierz Gołba’s Wieża spadochronowa {The
Parachute Tower), and Aleksander KamMski’s Kamienie na szaniec {Stones Thrown on the Earth-work).
On the basis of these wotks, an analysis of various kinds of heroism has been canied out, as well as a study
of the uncommon fate of the books that made part of our country’s history.
Throughout the present studies, various garden images are used as a leitmotif: the garden as
a metaphor of our country, as a metaphor of the immediate environmait of one’s ćbildhood, as a symbol of
forests, parks, and of the road to one’s „last guard”
