Recent Children's Lit Publications

Adding to the wealth of scholarly material on children's literature are two recent publications, including a journal issue and an international book title.

1. Newest Issue of The Looking Glass online journal

Vol. 17 No. 1 has just been published, with articles that consider the intellectual elements that readers use to create their meaning from texts.
They have Lemony Snicket, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Pied Piper, history and spirituality all being explored, with plenty of questions for you to ponder.

2.  New Book on Children's Literature in Foreign Language Teaching

If you are interested in the role of children's literature in foreign language teaching and if you read German, then you might be interested in this new book:

Kinder- und Jugendliteratur im Fremdsprachenunterricht, by Emer O'Sullivan & Dietmar Rösler
Tübingen: Stauffenburg 2013


 

Call for Submissions: Jeunesse Special Issue on Consumption

Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures invites essay submissions for a special issue addressing the many interpretations of consumption and their meanings in relation to youth texts and culture(s). We welcome essays that consider registers of race, class, gender, and disability. Essays should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words in length and prepared for blind peer-review.

Consumption is a vehicle through which we come to understand proprietary relationships with people, places, bodies, and identities. If food is the primary signifier when we think of consumption, how might we read metaphoric consumption (of capital, culture, and place, for instance) in light of notions of necessity and survival?

Submissions are requested by: 15 December 2013.

Topics may include:

- representations of food or the ingestion of food and drink
- eating disorders, the stigma of obesity, and fatphobia
- pedagogy of health
- consumption as disease (ie. tuberculosis)
- obsession or fixation
- symbolic acts of devouring/being devoured
- cannibalism or consuming the self (eg. vampires, fairy tales)
- consumption, purchasing, ownership, and material culture
- discourses of consumption (good/bad consumers)
- young people as consumers, advertising for or about young people
- cultural consumerism/tourism

Inquiries may be directed to Larissa Wodtke, Managing Editor: l.wodtke@uwinnipeg.ca

Further information about submission guidelines is available at: http://jeunessejournal.ca

CFP: Special Edition of The Lion and the Unicorn

Call for Submissions

Tove Jansson: A Centennial Celebration 
Special Issue of The Lion and the Unicorn 

This special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn invites submissions on the various aspects of the works by the Finno-Swedish author Tove Jansson (pronounced TOO-vee YAA-nsson; 1914-2001). Among other topics, essays could focus on:

• Tove Jansson as a crosswriter: works for children and work for adults
• Tove Jansson as a multimedial author: word and image in her novels, picturebooks and comics; her illustrations to other children’s books
• Tove Jansson and the concept of canonicity
• Place and space in Tove Jansson’s works
• Echoes of war and trauma
• Queer palimpsests
• Intertextuality and metafiction
• Ecocritical and posthumanist approaches
• Transcultural reception
• Moomin characters as cultural icons
• Epitexts, including transmediations, web sites, social media, games, merchandise, and theme parks

Essays should be 15–20 pages (4,500–6,000 words). Please email your essay as a Word attachment to Professor Maria Nikolajeva at mn351@cam.ac.uk by July 1, 2013. Accepted essays will appear in the April 2014 issue, to mark Tove Jansson’s centenary on August 9. Or, if you prefer, you can mail a hard copy to Maria Nikolajeva, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 8PQ, UK.

CFP: Comics, Picturebooks and Childhood

Call for Papers: Special issue Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcom20/current)

Special Issue Editors: Dr. Mel Gibson (University of Northumbria), Dr. Kay Sambell (University of Northumbria), Dr. Golnar Nabizadeh (The University of Western Australia).

This special edition will explore links between graphic novels and comics in relation to childhood. Both have been studied in relation to how they work (key examples being Maria Nikoljeva and Carole Scott's How Picturebooks Work and Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics). The history, specific creators, culture and audiences for these media have also been areas of research. Focusing on the links across illustration, graphic narratives and visual culture, this special issue will offer critical examinations of the field of comics and picturebooks.

Comics and picturebooks are not typically considered together, although some research has done so, including Mel Gibson's article "Graphic Novels, Comics and Picturebooks" in the Routledge Companion to Children's Literature and David Lewis's "Oops!: Colin McNaughton and 'Knowingness'" in Children’s Literature in Education.

In relation to audience, comics and picturebooks have frequently been associated with younger readers, despite the two being very flexible media which can be used to address readers of all ages on any topic. When such assumptions are dominant, this is usually related to perceptions of what might be ‘appropriate’ content.

Sometimes controversy is about an entire medium, as John A. Lent outlines in "Comics Controversies and Codes: Reverberations in Asia." This chapter, in the book Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign, examined how manga comics were seen as having an impact upon the health and morals of young people in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan between the 1940s and the 1980s.

Equally, controversy might focus on a single text, as was the case in relation to the British publication of Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin by Suzanne Bösche (originally published in Denmark as Mette bor hos Morten og Erik), one of the first picturebooks focusing on homosexuality and family structure. This single text was a key element in Britain in the introduction of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbade the "promotion" of homosexuality by local government.

In both of these cases, what may be seen to underpin controversy relating to these media are social constructions of childhood, a concept developed within Childhood Studies and perhaps best illustrated by Allison James and Alan Prout in the book Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood.

This issue also constitutes an attempt to extend the scope of scholarship on the comic and the picturebook beyond US/UK and European critical frameworks by highlighting Asian and Australian visual cultures and contexts.

Suggested topics for proposals include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Creators who work with both these media, such as Raymond Briggs and Shaun Tan.

- Picturebook creators who are influenced by comics. For example, the ways in which the work of Maurice Sendak is influenced by that of Winsor McCay.

- Comics for children and constructions of childhood

- Controversies around comics, picturebooks, childhood and child readers

- Defining the borders and emerging areas in comic book scholarship

- Manga, comics and picturebooks

- Comic book conventions and avant-garde innovations

- Divergences and intersections between comic books and picturebooks

- When and how does a comic book creator become perceived as a picture book creator?

- In what ways do constructions of childhood as innocent and vulnerable impact what is considered suitable content in a comic or picture book?

Deadline for proposals for 5000-7000 word articles is March 31, 2013 (for issue 5:1, June/July 2014 of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcom20/current). Send proposals to Dr. Mel Gibson at mel.gibson@northumbria.ac.uk.

Kenneth Kidd Brown Bag Session Recap!

University of Florida professor of children's literature Kenneth Kidd virtually joined a group of graduate students and faculty yesterday for a discussion about his book Freud in Oz, among other topics. SDSU Children's Literature faculty Joseph Thomas, June Cummins, Phillip Serrato, and Mary Galbraith eagerly asked questions of their UF colleague Kidd, who answered with eloquence and the occasional self-effacing humor.

Belying his modesty, though, is Kidd's work itself, which takes a thoughtful look at children's literature through a psychoanalytic lens. The chapter under discussion, "Child Analysis, Play, and Pooh," progresses chronologically through the early stages of psychoanalytic research into children's behavior, from Freud to his daughter Anna to Melanie Klein to D.W. Winnicott, and looks at the links between child psychoanalysis and the inherent themes of children's literature. Kidd aligns these links with "Poohology," which he describes as "a form of popular psychology and child analysis and literary criticism and theory"that "refashions the children's classic into a plaything for adults, supporting the interiorization of childhood and of childhood's forms." As Kidd describes, Winnie the Pooh, with its straightforward narration and its playful themes, is an ideal backdrop for examining how play shapes childhood.

Specific questions that came up during the brown bag session with Kidd focused largely on Kidd's treatment of Frederick Crews' The Pooh Perplex, which satirizes the intensity of literary criticism while also highlighting the promise of what literary criticism can uncover. The discussion with Kidd unearthed how Crews' work leans toward sarcasm and in fact shut the door on literary criticism of Pooh for years, but conversely may also have paved the way for analysis of children's literature. By illuminating the shortcomings of taking children's literature too seriously, Crews also may have inadvertently proposed a way of looking at children's literature with both intellectual rigor and self-awareness.

Also up for discussion was the idea of the "inner child" and how much of that is extended adolescence or performative adolescence. The group talked about how contemporary young adult authors in particular seem to be both adult and adolescent at once. Kidd discussed the later chapters in his book that trace the American fascination with adolescence from the 1950s onward and try to explicate a broader history of what we now call the YA novel. Kidd described YA authors as potentially "both therapists and an older young adult," an identity that makes them adept at writing for a teen audience.

In addition to fielding scholarly questions, Kidd also discussed the PhD program at the University of Florida (where a student can specifically focus on graduate work in children's literature) and the job prospects for nascent scholars in the field. While job openings specifically recruiting children's literature scholars are relatively scarce, Kidd pointed out that children's literature PhDs coming out of UF are also well-positioned to talk about their research in broader terms. His assertion supports what we all discover when studying children's literature: the themes and ideas that we analyze may start in children's literature, but they translate to numerous other genres within literature. And as the group also discussed in the brown bag session, we were all children once.

Overall this was an engaging and enlightening discussion with one of the premier scholars in the field of children's literature. Thanks to Kenneth Kidd for joining us via Face Time, and thanks to Joseph Thomas for arranging this brown bag session!

Addendum: An actual corporeal visit from Kenneth Kidd is tentatively planned for the Spring 2013 semester. Stay tuned for more details!

Jill Coste, SDSU Children's Lit MA Student, Receives the ChLA Graduate Student Essay Award for her paper in June Cummins' Grad Class: Congratulations

by June Cummins

March 14, 2012

I'm very happy to announce that SDSU MA student Jill Coste has won the Children's Literature Association's award for best graduate student essay (MA level) for her wonderful paper, “Coping with Compulsion Through Fantasy in Harriet the Spy, Dangerous Angels, and Wintergirls.” We are all so proud of Jill!

--------- Jill is also our Graduate Assistant at the Center for the Study of Children's Lit at SDSU.

See the new book review blog she designed at:

sdsubookreviews.blogspot.com

A.A.

March 19, Publishing Info Event Sponsored by MFA Program and the English/CompLit Dept., SDSU

Join MFA and MA students for an afternoon and evening of panels and information from publishers, authors, and agents in LL 430, 4-9, SDSU.

March 15, publishing info event by SDSU English/CompLit Dept. Honors Society

Subject: Publishing Your Dreams - Presented by Sigma Tau Delta (Also Graduation apparel information)

Come one come all to the March 15 Publishing Seminar from 12-1:30 PM in A&L 266. We will be interviewing Quentin Bailey about the process of creating, editing and publishing his book, Wordsworth’s Vagrants, as well as Brendan Mancilla about the process of self-publishing his book, Someone to Remember Me. Anyone interested in writing and publishing is highly encouraged to come and learn!

Also, we will also be taking orders for graduation apparel at the event! This is the site where merch can be perused: http://www.english.org/sigmatd/store.shtml. If you can't make it to the Publishing event, you can drop off money with a note saying what items you'd like us to snag for you. Just slip it under our office door (AL 222) by the end of the week.

If you have any questions, toss us an email and we'll get back to you right quick!

-Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society

Publishing Fair and Readings, SDSU, Monday March 19

SDSU PUBLISHING & LITERARY FAIR
MARCH 19, 2012


2.30pm: PhD Programs and Opportunities Abroad: Q and A with Martin Woodside
AH 2134
this event is open to MA and MFA students.

4pm - Panel on Publishing: Editors of Cooper Dillon Books, Calypso Editions and City Works Press speak about the details of contemporary literary publishing world
SDSU Love Library, room # LL 430/431

3pm-7pm Publishing Fair

Participating organizations will include:
Cooper Dillon Books,
Calypso Editions,
Pacific Review,
Poetry International,
Fiction International,
Alchemy: A Journal of Literary Translation,
California Journal of Poetics,
Writers Ink Literary Center,
Acorn Review,
Red Hen Press,
City Works Press,
San Diego JCC Literary Series,
Puma Press,
Museum of Living Artist Literary Series,
Border Voices Literary Festival,
Black Crow Reading Series,
Haiku Society of America,
Cider Press Review
Denver Publishing Institute

SDSU Love Library, room # LL 430/431

7pm: Living Writers Series Presents: Fiction and Poetry Reading by Chris Baron, Elizabeth Myhr, Martin Woodside and Tony Bonds
SDSU Love Library, room # LL 430/431

Enid Blyton's Books to be Re-Illustrated, The Guardian, excerpt

Famous Five 70th anniversary marked by star illustrators

Quentin Blake and Helen Oxenbury among artists to reinterpret Enid Blyton's classic children's characters for a new generation

• Alison Flood
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 February 2012
  

Famous Five at 70: Detail from Emma Chichester Clark's take on Five Run Away Together. Photograph: Hodder Children's Books

Much-loved illustrators including Quentin Blake and Helen Oxenbury have reimagined the Famous Five to mark the 70th anniversary of the adventurous quintet's first appearance, bringing new looks to Enid Blyton's classic characters.

Former SDSU Children's Lit Researcher published in Children's Lit in Education

Children‘s Literature in Education

‘You are a Flaw in the Pattern’: Difference, Autonomy and Bullying in YA Fiction

Lourdes Lopez-Ropero November 2011