Call for Papers: Children’s Literature and Migration

Call for Papers: Children’s Literature and Migration
“Boris had never seen a stork in his life, but he knew right away that he was in great danger. He
hopped away as fast as he could.” But wherever frog Boris from Jens Rassmus’ Der wunderbarste Platz auf der Welt (The Most Marvellous Place on Earth) hops, nobody is prepared to take him in.
A foreigner in foreign places, a foreigner at home, at home in foreign countries – or just German,
Austrian, French like everyone else? In light of the never-ending debates on fears of integration,
alleged refusals to integrate and ubiquitous racism, children’s and young adults’ literature on migration allows us to address the topic gently. It moves the lives of children and young adults from migrant families into the focus of the majority society, facilitates the development of understanding and tolerance, the comprehension of immigrant cultures and the realisation that the alleged differences sometimes do not exist and that everything is not as problematic as it seems at first glance.
How do children and young adults from migrant families live in their and our countries? Which
problems shape their everyday lives? And which hopes, problems and fears do they share with
other children and young adults in their native countries? The summer issue of interjuli will address the topic of migration and how it figures in children’s and young adults’ literature. Possible topics include:
• Flight and expulsion in children’s and young adults’ literature
• Racism and xenophobia
• Interculturality and multiculturalism in books for children and young adults
• Multilingualism in books for children and young adults
• Picture books’ power of integration
• Theories of problem-oriented children’s and young adults’ literature – intercultural
vs. “foreigner literature”
• Problems, chances and the creative potential of authors from immigrant families
• Migration literature in nursery and school
As always, we explicitly encourage contributions that do not pertain to our focal topic. Please send your manuscripts by March 31st, 2011. Guidelines concerning formatting and editing will be sent out upon request. interjuli is an interdisciplinary scientific journal for studies in international children’s and young adults’ literature. We publish research papers as well as reviews of primary and secondary works. Articles may, but do not have to, pertain to our focal topic.
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