CFP. Issue 27. The problem of addressing children's literature

The ongoing debate about the line between children's and adult literature mostly comes down to the question: does children's literature as such exist? Since the emergence of children's literature, it has been denied the right to exist as an independent literary phenomenon: in the 18th century, educators and publishers saw children's books as an applied educational tool; in the 19th century, the first critics of children's literature considered children's reading and children's literature to be inseparable. Some of them suggested replacing children's books with adaptations of adult works or educating children on examples of adult literature. By the beginning of the 20th century, a more tolerant attitude had developed toward literary works created specifically for children. Contemporary researchers usually point to the ambivalence of children's literature, which is addressed to both children and adult readers. Another point of view is that "children's literature" has not yet been written, because it is still created by adult writers with their own perceptions and ideas about childhood experience. At the same time, pedagogical criticism from the second half of the 19th century developed the concept of the limitlessness of children's literature. According to this concept, children's literature originates from ancient times, then folklore and classical literature and is characterized by its instructive and educational intentions. This approach makes it possible to include a large part of world literature in the circle of "children's literature".

We would like to dedicate the 27th issue of Children's Readings to the problem of addressing children's literature. Literature created for children is the result of authors construction of a child's view of the world, a child's optics and worldview. The approaches used by authors to solve these problems vary from one literary period to another. The idea about the child reader as the addressee of a children's book has also changed considerably in the history of children's literature. Actors in the production of children's literature, such as children's writers, publishers, editors, illustrators, educators, critics play an important role in the construction of these perceptions.

For the 27th issue of Children’s Readings, we propose discussing primarily (but not exclusively) the following set of questions:

- Who and how is involved in constructing the audience of a children's book?

- How have ideas about the audience and functions of children's literature changed? What factors have influenced this change?

- How is the mechanism of publishing children's books constructed in different historical periods? How has the typology of readers in the publishing market changed?

- What techniques do authors use to create children's books? How did these techniques change?

- Which texts from adult literature have been integrated into children's literature? What are the mechanisms of this integration?

In addition to articles submitted for the main subject of the journal, we welcome submissions for the following sections: Reviews, Archives, and Interviews

• Recommended length of main articles: up to 40,000 characters
• Submission deadline: 1 February 2025.
• This issue is scheduled to appear in July 2025.

Submissions can be emailed to the editorial board at detskie.chtenia@gmail.com.

 

We appreciate your cooperation.

DCh Editorial Board