CFP. Issue 31. Winter in children’s literature

2026-07-03

Dear colleagues,

We would like to devote the 31st issue of Children’s Readings to winter in children’s literature.

The temporal dimension of texts addressed to a young audience has long attracted scholarly attention: researchers examine the chronotypes of various genres, the “time loop” characteristic of fairy‑tale and fantastic narratives, the time of growing up, and “subjective time,” employing a wide range of methodological approaches. Within this field, the seasons constitute one of the most compelling and multifaceted phenomena. Among them, we have chosen to focus on winter — a season with a particularly vivid and ambivalent cultural reputation.

Descriptions of seasonality and the cyclical change of seasons began to appear in children’s literature during the Enlightenment. The children’s book was expected to acquaint the child with the surrounding reality and provide encyclopedic knowledge about the world. Eighteenth‑century authors depicted the seasons not only in an educational mode but also as subjects of artistic representation, as exemplified by the well‑known poem Winterleid by C. A. Overbeck, published in J. H. Campe’s Kleine Kinderbibliothek (1779) and later introduced into Russian culture through A. S. Shishkov’s translation Nikolasha’s Praise of Winter Pleasures (1783). The expansion of the genre and thematic palette of children’s literature led to the emergence of complex, rich, and multifaceted texts centered on winter. Winter could serve as a background element in realistic prose, become an object of aesthetic depiction in poetry and prose, be personified in literary fairy tales, fantasy, and thrillers (e.g., V. F. Odoevsky’s Morozko, H. C. Andersen’s The Snow Queen, C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), act as the main driving force of the plot (T. Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter), constitute the very space of the children’s book (K. Iwamura’s 14 Forest Mice, T. Medvedeva’s Around Antarctica: Exploring the Icy South, R. Belsvik’s Prostodursen dilogy, S. R. Berner’s winter book, etc.), or be associated with “social time”: Christmas and New Year holidays, winter vacations.

We propose the following topics for consideration:

  • Representation of winter in children’s literature

  • Representation of hibernation and sleep as winter processes

  • Winter spaces in fantasy and dystopian literature

  • Comparison of winter motifs with techniques used to depict other seasons

  • Siberia, the Arctic, and permafrost regions in children’s literature and media

  • Ice and snow in children’s literature and media

  • Authorial strategies for depicting nature, climate, and seasonality in travel literature, guidebooks, and travelogues

  • Popular science literature for children about winter

  • Children’s winter experiences in literature and media

  • The Christmas tale for children as a form of calendar prose

  • Commercialization of winter themes in the children’s book market (including connections with Christmas and New Year)

We invite you to participate and kindly ask you to inform colleagues who may be interested in this topic. We also welcome submissions to the journal’s sections Reviews and Conferences.

Journal website: http://detskie-chtenia.ru

Submission guidelines: http://detskie-chtenia.ru/index.php/journal/about/submissions

Recommended length: up to 40,000 characters.

Submission deadline: 1 February 2027

The issue will be published in June 2027.

Please send proposed articles to the editorial board at: detskie.chtenia@gmail.com

 

We look forward to working with you,

DCh Editorial Board