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Introduction: Diversity in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. Lydia Kokkola is a Collegium Researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies(TIAS) University of Turku, Finland. She is also Adjunct Professor of Children's Literature in English at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. \"Kokkola is committed to ethical criticism. She asks repeatedly how literature affects children’s thinking and beliefs about the Holocaust and fascism. This is a welcome approach, which is at its best, in my view...when it urges us to think seriously about the profound impact that literature can have on young readers...Kokkola combines theory and criticism of children’s literature with Holocaust studies in productive and knowledgeable ways.\" -- The Lion and the Unicorn \" Lydia Kokkola's study...is keenly narratological, and she often draws on formalist and structuralist approaches as she explicates texts. Like many before her, she is concerned with narratives that simultaneously reveal and conceal as they deal with horrific events, but the kinds of questions she asks focus specifically on how information can be withheld of divulged...Kokkola's approach also brings new dimensions to previous discussions of children's literature and the Holocaust.\" -- Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History

Home is often assumed to be a safe place, a place to which children can return after their adventures Away. For many gay and lesbian teens, both fictional and in real life, however, the space they share with their family of origin is not a place where they can feel at home. The heterosexual family home is often so hostile to queerly desiring teens that they are forced to leave in search of a place where they can feel at home. The queer spaces they enter in their search are usually considered risky spaces – public spaces, urban spaces, the bar and the street – unhomely spaces. In these temporary, in-between spaces, the queerly desiring teens in the novels examined in this paper form new family structures. Although all the Anglophone novels discussed in this article end on moments of up-lift and hope for the future, the association of the queerly desiring youngster with risky spaces suggests that the queer teens are themselves unheimlich (uncanny).

Appearing first as a weekly serial in The Christian Herald, Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna was first published in book form in 1913. This popular story of an impoverished orphan girl who travels from America’s western frontier to live with her wealthy maternal Aunt Polly in the fictional east coast town of Beldingsville went through forty-seven printings in seven years and remains in print today in its original version, as well as in various translations and adaptations. The story’s enduring appeal lies in Pollyanna’s sunny personality and in her glad game, her playful attempt to accentuate the positive in every situation. In celebration of its centenary, this collection of thirteen original essays examines a wide variety of the novel and its sequel’s themes and concerns, as well as adaptations of the story in film, manga and translation. In this edited collection on Pollyanna, internationally respected and emerging scholars of children’s literature consider Porter’s work from modern critical perspectives. Contributors focus primarily on the novel itself but also examine Porter’s sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up, and the various film versions and translations of the novel. With backgrounds in children’s literature, cultural and film studies, philosophy, and religious studies, these scholars extend critical thinking about Porter’s work beyond the thematic readings that have dominated previous scholarship. In doing so, the authors approach the Pollyanna from theoretical perspectives that examine what happens when Pollyanna engages with the world—her community and the natural environment—around her, exposing the implicit philosophical, religious, and nationalist ideologies of the era in which Pollyanna was written. The final section is devoted to studies of adaptations of Porter’s protagonist.

Today, Sweden enjoys a positive international reputation for its commitment to human rights issues, for instance, in relation to the recent migrant crisis. Abuses committed by the Swedish state against certain ethnic groups within the country are less well known, both within and beyond its borders. These included systematic attempts to curtail the use of indigenous and local languages, thereby causing communicative and ideological rifts between children and their parents. These policies were enacted through the school system from the 1920s until the 1970s, and particularly affected people living in the Arctic region where the national borders are disputed. In this article, we examine two twenty-first-century films set during this era, featuring feisty female characters responding to the school policy. Elina: As though I wasn’t there is a children’s film created by people “outside” the cultural group represented; and Sámi Blood features an adolescent protagonist (and her older self), created by “insiders” of the cultural group represented. In both films, the female protagonists’ relative lack of agency within the state school system is contrasted with their powerful connections to the Arctic landscape. We seek to examine how these films contribute to the work of apology, beginning with a public acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past. Whilst one of the films concludes with a celebration of the female protagonists’ agency, the other proffers a more ambiguous portrayal of power in relation to culture, nationality, and identity.

[...]Holmberg has all the credentials for being a spokesperson for the Sámi; his poetry and through this lens. First articulated by Schank and Abelson (1977), scripts describe the way in which knowledge is stored, created, and applied in sequences. Since these poems were written in Finnish, they are ripe with material for a consideration of scripts and reading across differences. In another interview, he said that \"[Jos itsenipelastan itseltäni] is a kind of autobiography of the events of my life\" (Lakkala 2015; our translation). [...]rather than referring to \"the speaker\" or the \"poetic 'I,'\" we will often simply refer to \"Holmberg,\" which also allows us to expose the dangers of adopting such slippages.

This is a theoretical paper which presents a Distributed Cognition (DCog) perspective on reading that supplements existing approaches to account for phenomena that appear contradictory. The DCog approach moves understandings of reading beyond the individualistic, mental processing of text to a consideration of reading as situated, embodied material engagement that draws on multiple timescales. Drawing on the field of cognitive anthropology, the DCog framework situates reading within an ecology of three closely connected dimensions: 1) mind-body-material environment coordination, 2) distribution across a social group, and 3) distribution across time. By integrating cognitive, affective, sensory-motor, and cultural dimensions, this framework provides a robust approach to understanding contemporary reading practices in complex multimedia environments. The resulting conceptualisation of reading accounts for seeming disparities in existing empirical research without the need for ad hoc adjustments as new reading ecologies emerge, for instance with digitisation. It is also sufficiently simple to promote communication of research findings to practitioners in the field.

This is a theoretical paper which presents a Distributed Cognition (DCog) perspective on reading that supplements existing approaches to account for phenomena that appear contradictory. The DCog approach moves understandings of reading beyond the individualistic, mental processing of text to a consideration of reading as situated, embodied material engagement that draws on multiple timescales. Drawing on the field of cognitive anthropology, the DCog framework situates reading within an ecology of three closely connected dimensions: 1) mind-body-material environment coordination, 2) distribution across a social group, and 3) distribution across time. By integrating cognitive, affective, sensory-motor, and cultural dimensions, this framework provides a robust approach to understanding contemporary reading practices in complex multimedia environments. The resulting conceptualisation of reading accounts for seeming disparities in existing empirical research without the need for ad hoc adjustments as new reading ecologies emerge, for instance with digitisation. It is also sufficiently simple to promote communication of research findings to practitioners in the field.

Meänkieli was not officially recognized as a language until 2002; prior to that, it was considered a dialect of Finnish. Less than half of the Tornedalingers speak Meänkieli, mainly due to repressive language policies that were enforced from the 1920s to the 1960s. To date, publications listed as being in Meänkieli total around 160, of which about 90 are for children and 10 are dictionaries. The three main publishing houses—Förlaaki Kaamos, Meänkielen förlaaki, Barents Publisher—are small, desktop enterprises established by activists committed to promoting the language and culture. In addition, a few other companies have published translations. In this letter, I venture to provide Bookbird readers with an overview of Meänkieli literature, most of which has been written and produced by parents who are politically active in their promotion of minority rights. The primary purpose of these books is to pass on the language—not only to the children but also to their parents and carers who, as a result of the repressive language policies, are not necessarily fluent speakers. They also endeavor to forge a sense of group identity.