Title: War and Displacement in Children's Literature
Abstract: War and Displacement in Children's Literature Mateusz Świetlicki (bio) and Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang (bio) Military conflicts, like the on-going Russo-Ukrainian war, not only affect humans, but also other living beings that surround us. We wrote this short editorial after learning about the bombing of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam in Ukraine on June 6, 2023. Many Ukrainians from that region have been forced to leave their flooded homes, and hundreds of animals, including those at the local zoo, have been killed. Two World Wars and numerous other conflicts resulting in genocides, displacement, and crimes have given the twentieth century a reputation as "the century of trauma." The first decades of the twenty-first century seem to echo the previous one, with the (re)emergence of various transcultural conflicts and ideological wars resulting in the forced migration of millions of children worldwide. In the current digitalized and media-saturated world, it is possible to escape from the frightful images of war. Moreover, some of these atrocities have already resulted in the publication of children's books, often ones featuring the perspectives of previously underrepresented communities. Some countries that do not actively participate in global conflicts struggle with their own inner conflict(s) and ideological wars, often stemming from the difficulty of accepting one's privileged or implicated position. This frequently results in banning or challenging children's texts devoted to so-called controversial topics, such as racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. While reading the news and thinking about this special issue of Book-bird, which features an illustration from Oleksandr Shatokhin's The Happiest Lion Cub on its cover, we saw a touching photo of a young Ukrainian boy trying to save his dog from drowning. The photo made us think of Arne Svingen and Kamila Slocinska's picturebook Når Kaniner Blir Redde [When Rabbits Get Scared]. The book is discussed by Åse Marie Ommundsen, Gro Marie Stavem, and Anne Kristine Øgreid in their article, The Role of the Child in a War Zone: 10-year-old Students' Responses to a Cognitively Challenging Picturebook on War. An Interview Study, based on a study they conducted with a group of children 20 days after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Despite this issue's focus on various global and local military conflicts, some connections to the current Russo-Ukrainian war can be found in most of the articles. In Young People and Collective Trauma in Georgian Fiction about The Abkhazian War and the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, Ani Chubinidze brings attention to the depiction of young victims of two military conflicts in Georgia, demonstrating that Ukraine is not the only victim of Russia's aggression. Marija Todorova and Kathleen Ahrens mentioned the diary of Yeva Skalietska, a Ukrainian girl, in their Children's War Diaries as Agents [End Page 1] of Peace, which focuses on texts written by survivors of two different wars: the Pacific War in Singapore and the Bosnian War. Moving further into the past, Francisco Antonio Martinez-Carratala's Poetry, Art and Historical Memory: Fostering Dialogue about War discusses historical memory in literature, in the context of the Second World War and Latin America. In The Paradox of the DMZ: Making War, Division, and Unification Intelligible Through Korean Picture Books, Yeojoo Lim and Sarah Park Dahlen explore how the complex history of the Korean War is portrayed in South Korean picturebooks. Finally, Margaret Baguley and Martin Kerby, in The Use of Images to Explore the Indigenous Experience of Conflict in Australian Children's Picture Books, showcase the role of images in Alfred's War and Multuggerah and the Sacred Mountain, Australian picture-books about the First World War and the Battle of Meewah. In the Letters section, you can read two interviews with Ukrainian authors and illustrators – Romana Romanyshyn, Andriy Lesiv, and Oleksander Shatokhin – about how they continue to write for children amidst the horror of war. Ja'nos Kovacs-Navarro and Soledad Véliz Córdoba also present an interesting journey of La Guerra de los Yacarés through (self)censorship in Chilean civic-military dictatorship period. Books on Books, edited by Jutta Reusch, is back in this issue, with six exciting books reviewed by various...
Publication Year: 2023
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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