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Theodor Adorno’s statement that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric exemplifies the artists’ loss for representational paradigms after the horrors of World War II. This issue is especially relevant when it comes to children’s literature, and much scholarship has discussed whether conflicts and genocides should be suitable topics for the younger addressees. Published in 1971, Judith Kerr’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is an interesting case. In this article I argue that Kerr’s book is a semi-autobiographical story which raises interesting considerations concerning representation, memory, language and discourse. I explain how, by telling the story of a nine-year old asylum-seeker, Kerr’s novel reveals a dual tension between the need for those who survived the Shoah to elaborate trauma, and the role of testimonial literature in counterbalancing the risks of narratives of denial. I also suggest that, by portraying such events from a child’s perspective, the novel focuses on the way refugee children attempt at defining their own identity once they leave their homeland and must settle in a host country.
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This paper analyses Captain Frederick Marryat’s The Children of the New Forest, published in 1847, the first British historical novel addressed to children. The aim is to highlight the coming of a new interest in children’s literature, that is the use of history both for didactic purposes and for entertaining a juvenile audience. Through a simple and linear language, Captain Marryat depicts the historical context of 1647 during the time of the English Civil War, showing his unexpected support for the Royalist cause. The form of the Robinsonade used by the author also recalls the texts of Daniel Defoe and Johann Wyss. This entertaining adventure story with its incisive dramatic effects is a turning point for children’s literature as far as the theme of history is concerned.
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My paper analyses how some modern and contemporary children and young adults’ picture books tell and portray the First World War, in particular trench warfare on the Western Front. In order to do this, I have chosen modern and contemporary picture books which not only describe the war to children, but they also do it through children’s eyes. My starting point is John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” and Linda Granfield’s In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae (1995), illustrated by Janet Wilson. Daily life in the trenches is also dealt with in Norman Jorgensen’s In Flanders Fields (illustrated by Brian Harrison-Lever) and Lynn Huggins-Cooper’ One Boy’s War (illustrated by Ian Benfold-Haywood), published, respectively, in 2002 and 2008.
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