PAMLA wrap up, MAPACA, and the Dystopian (white) Child

Just some notes to start off the week...

1. PAMLA just flew by this weekend! Held at the Bahia Resort in San Diego, the conference offered a plethora of insightful, fascinating, and fun panels. Because the theme of the conference dealt with Stages of Identity, there were plenty of presentations that focused on children and childhood, making this a particularly fruitful conference for those of us studying children's literature and childhood studies. I'll talk a bit more about the experience and what I ruminated on in a later post. For now, kudos to everyone who participated and many thanks to Dr. Kenneth Kidd on his PAMLA Forum presentation on "beginner" culture. Did you all have a great experience?

2. The Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Pop Culture Association Conference is being held this week in Atlantic City, New Jersey, from November 7-9.  The conference consists of a huge number of subject areas, one of which is the Children and Childhood Studies Area. You can check out the conference schedule here to see all the topics, including "Food in Children's Literature, "Pediatrics and Popular Culture" and "Toys, Clay, and Satan: Animation and Children's Literature." If you happen to attend, share with us your experience!

3. In a recent Salon article, Dr. Anna Mae Duane talks about an emerging truth about childhood that we see from "The Walking Dead"and the rise of dystopias. She largely addresses the American need for "children to remain innocent, no matter what the cost. A quick glance at the stories we’ve told ourselves for centuries reveals a persistent tendency to categorize children as one of two things: innocent victims or bad seeds." Duane then turns that toward the reasons why all these dystopian child heroes and heroines are white -- because reality already consists of a violent world for minorities in America. Her argument pushes us to the starting point, raising important and necessary racial discussions but leaving it there for us to run with. What else can we make of dystopian heroes being white? What would happen with ethnic diversification? And when will we stop thinking of children as innocent vessels, but as human beings?

Call for papers: Barnboken – Journal of Children’s Literature Research

Following are three Call for Papers for Barnboken – Journal of Children’s Literature Research.
For information on any of them, please see www.barnboken.net.

1. For the Spring 2014 issue: “You're Out of Control!” The Unruly Child in Children’s Literature

Unruly, wild and loud children are common in children’s literature. Indeed, there seems to be a need to portray children outside parental control, or even of children who rebel against oppressive adult regimes, as in Shockheaded Peter or Pippi Longstocking. One could argue that children’s and YA fiction establishes a zone of freedom where (fictional) children are allowed a measure of freedom. It is of course true that the unruly and anarchic child can be used as a warning, but more often than not the disobedient and troublesome child saves the day. Both Astrid Lindgren’s Emil and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter are rule-breakers who go their own ways, yet they ultimately bring about harmony and redemption.

The unruly child can be seen from different perspectives. Concepts that can open up the notion of the unruly child include: identity, power (not least between adult-child), normativity, body, performativity, animalism, and queer. Some of the questions that beg to be asked are: what is the role of the unruly child in children’s literature? What are the limits of “unruliness”? How close is the state of the wild child to that of animals? Thus, the wild, the loud and the unruly will be the Barnboken – Journal of Children’s Literature Research Spring theme 2014. We welcome proposals and articles in that spirit, and we do so up until:

23 September 2013 (proposals)
25 November 2013 (articles)

2. For the Autumn 2014 issue: Britt G. Hallqvist 100 Years

Britt G. Hallqvist (1914-1997) is one of the most important figures in Swedish children’s literature during the 20th C. Her contribution is at once deep and versatile. From the début with the comic masterpiece Rappen’s på Blåsopp [The Rappens of Blåsopp] in 1950, over numerous children’s and YA-books, several collections of poetry and verse, children’s drama, to children’s songs, hymns and prayers, her work is characterized by a both playful and exact attitude to language. Equally important was her role as a congenial translator of children’s literature. She translated Kipling’s The Jungle Books, Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie, Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Tolkien’s The Hobbit, to just mention a few. Finally, in her translations just as in her original work, she switched with perfect ease from pose to poetry as can be seen in her indispensable translations of nonsense poetry (Plath, Lear, Eliot, Krüss) into Swedish. Barnboken – Journal of Children’s Literature Research will devote the 2014 Autumn issue to Britt G. Hallqvist and her contribution to Swedish children’s literature. We welcome proposals and articles up until:

25 November 2013 (proposals)
1 April 2014 (articles)

3. For the Spring 2015 issue: The Institutions that Shape Children’s Literature: Schools, Publishers and Libraries

Children’s literature cannot be reduced to the book the reader holds in her hand. The act of reading comes at the end of a long chain of actions, all of which are prompted and supported by different literary, cultural, pedagogical institutions (schools, libraries) as well as by commercial interests (publishers, booksellers). Thus, to understand the conditions that shape children’s literature and children’s reading it is necessary to scrutinize children’s literature as a cultural field with its own infrastructure. Through which channels do children’s books reach the child reader? What is the role of publishers, libraries, reading campaigns, reviews of children’s books, literary prizes? Which discourses about children and childhood shape the institutions of children’s literature? What is the role of new technologies and media forms in creating new arenas for children’s literature? Which tools can children’s literature research bring to bear on the field of children’s literature and the cultural practices of reading? These are some of the questions that Barnboken – Journal of Children’s Literature Research will address in the 2015 Spring issue. We welcome proposals and articles on these and related topics up until:

12 August 2014 (proposals)
25 November 2014 (articles)

For more information, please see www.barnboken.net.

Åsa Warnqvist, editor
Swedish Institute for Children’s Books
Odengatan 61
SE-113 22 Stockholm
SWEDEN
Tel: + 46 8 54 54 20 51. E-mail: barnboken@sbi.kb.se

Children's Literature in English Language Education Journal Available in Open Access Format Online

The debut issue of the CLELEjournal (Children's Literature in English Language Education Journal) is available online.

CLELEjournal is a peer-reviewed, biannual, and open access journal dedicated to examining the use of children's literature in teaching English language. The first issue features the following articles:

• "The World Turned Upside Down: Exploring Alternate History with Young Adults" by Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak & Mateusz Marecki
• "From Reading Pictures to Understanding a Story in the Foreign Language" by Annett Kaminski
• "Humanizing Teaching English to Young Learners with Children's Literature" by Irma Ghosn
• "Playing with Nonsense: Toward Language Bridging in a Multilingual Classroom" by Urmishree Bedamatta
• "Response to 'The Lost Thing': Notes from a Secondary Classroom" by Sandie Mourão

Visit http://clelejournal.org to read these articles and learn more about CLELEjournal.