Archives

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2024)

The 25th issue of Children's Readings to studying intercultural relations in literature for children. The choice of this topic stems from the fundamental importance of intercultural relations in literature in general, and children's literature in particular. History shows that the formation of any national children's literature is closely linked to various forms of adaptation and reinterpretation of plots, images, and ideas from children's literature written in other languages. The articles in this issue, dedicated to the transfer of educational or artistic texts for children to another culture, demonstrate that the "transplantation" of these texts can be influenced by the personal characteristics of translators, illustrators, and publishers, as well as by the underlying properties of the ethnopedagogical concept of the receiving culture. During certain periods of children's literature development, translators' interventions are balanced by universal requirements for the educational goals of children's literature. In other periods, however, such interventions, practically beyond the control of pedagogical or political doctrines, become a means of uncensored expression. The discussion about cultural transfer on the pages of the journal "Children's Readings" has just begun and will certainly continue. In the meantime, we are pleased to offer our readers the latest research in this field.
Vol. 24 No. 2 (2023)

The main block of articles in this issue of Children's Readings is devoted to the construction of history and images of the past in literature for children. The range of research questions answered by the authors of the articles presented in this issue is quite broad.
Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)

The 23rd issue of Children's Readings is devoted to a phenomenon, the comprehension of which vividly demonstrates the fluidity of social ideas about the child as a creative subject — children's creativity. We include in this concept both the process and the results of children's efforts to create new, previously non-existent unique objects.
Vol. 22 No. 2 (2022)

The studies presented in the 22nd issue of Children's Readings are varied in their material and broad in their subject matter. On the one hand, they analyze the political, economic, and medical contexts in the history of children's books. The involvement of the Russian parliament in deciding the fate of the elementary school textbook, the concerns of medical hygienists about the quality of printing for children, a large-scale panorama of the canon of children's literature in Soviet times, the modern attempts of non-professional authors to break into the book market of children's literature.

On the other hand, it is a study of the involvement of publishers of children's books (M. Wolf) and their bibliographers (O. Kapitsa and E. B. Martin) in constructing the "visibility" of certain groups of works, in attracting the attention of competent adult consumers to such segments of the book supply for children, which the experts for one reason or another decided to highlight. Third, it is an analysis of the biographical and creative trajectories of writers who have undertaken to write for children. Finally, Sergey Ushakin's reflections on the (unhappy) fate of the sociology of children's reading in Russia provide a critical look at the development of sociological methods for studying children's reading in the USSR.

We would like to draw the readers' attention to the manifesto of a new organization, the European Society of Researchers of Children's Literature.
Russian-Italian Relations in Children's Literature
Vol. 21 No. 1 (2022)

The 21 st issue of Children’s Readings is not the first issue of our journal devoted to the links between Russian children’s literature and other national children’s literature. Studies on Scandinavian children’s literature, on Russian-German contacts in the sphere of publishing and literature for children, on Chinese, and more broadly Eastern, literature for children and young people have been presented in the pages of Children’s Readings in different years. The peculiarity of this issue is that it is entirely devoted to the Russian-Italian relations in children’s literature and created jointly with our Italian colleagues. The focus of research interest is the range of works that have managed to cross the borders of national literature, factors influencing their success on a different national ground, processes of cultural transfer and reception of Italian children’s literature in Russia and Russian children’s literature in Italy.
Vol. 20 No. 2 (2021)

The 20th issue is devoted to gendered representations of children and adults in children's literature. The study of children's literature with an analytical toolkit of gender studies allows us to pose questions related to the peculiarities of the historical dynamics of power imbalance as translated into the texts for children. The following questions are among them: is children's literature ahead or lagging behind the agenda in depicting shifts in gender roles? To what extent do the literary images of children depend on the epistemological stance towards gender problematics? Does it prove to be productive to consider the genre and narrative characteristics as impactful in the construction of gender roles?
Vol. 19 No. 1 (2021)

The 19th issue of Children's Readings presents a discussion of fairy tales and science fiction in children's literature. The susceptibility of these genres to pedagogical and political influence are clearly seen in the historical perspective. At the same time, both genres are open to literary experiments, both in content and form. The main focus of the issue is the boundary between adult and children's worlds as presented in fairy tales and science fiction, as flexible and dependent on the prevailing concept of childhood as it is.
Vol. 18 No. 2 (2020)

The issue is devoted to the study of poetry for children and its translations. The research focuses on semantics and pragmatics of poetry for children: the development of children's poetry in Russia and Europe, literary criticism, rhythm, and metrics, applied poetry for children, pedagogical discussions that arise around it. Studies of translations of foreign-language poetry for children make it possible to see the similarities and differences in the development of poetic traditions for children in different languages and in different countries, as well as the boundaries of the individual contribution of the translator to the text, which they transplant into a different cultural soil in a different poetic environment.
Vol. 17 No. 1 (2020)

Volume 17 is devoted to the discussion of taboos in children's literature. During the Enlightenment, authors of children's books were united in their intention to teach children virtues by showing them “good and bad examples of behavior,” and none of the authors had the idea that any inconvenient, controversial, or provocative theme should be allowed in writing for children. However, already in the second half of the XIX century, critics singled out “harmful topics” that, due to their neglect, leaked into works for children and urged to fight such topics. On the contrary, at the beginning of the 20th century, they demanded to expand the scope of children's literature and introduce “burning topics of social struggle” into it. The Archive section materials are devoted to a retrospective of notions of taboos in children's books and children's reading. XXI century became a time of rapid elimination of taboos that have accumulated over the previous century, reflected in articles included in this issue.
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2019)

The 16th issue of Children's Readings is devoted to the research of children's books of the first three decades of the 20th century. During this period, the number of illustrated children's books and magazines increased markedly, cartoons for children started to appear, along with the development of mass education, school visual aids (posters, stands, illustrations in textbooks, etc.) has spread. In most of the articles of the issue, the authors in one way or another turn to the study of the international context of Soviet visual culture addressed to children: the influence of the British school of illustration on the Russian one, the influence of Soviet artists on French illustrators, the influence of American animation on the Soviet one, etc. This issue explores the importance of international exchange in the development of children's visual culture during the period. The visual content of children's books and magazines from the first third of the twentieth century gives a fair understanding of the extent to which borrowings influenced the formation of the image of Russia in other countries, and, on the contrary, how stereotypes about the “West” were reflected in the Soviet book culture for children.