Navigating Children’s Literature through Controversy

Elżbieta Jamróz-Stolarska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Information and Media Studies (University of Wrocław). She has published widely on the children’s book market, design and illustration. Her major recent work is Serie literackie dla dzieci i młodzieży w Polsce 1945–1989. Produkcja wydawnicza i ukształtowanie edytorskie [Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature Series in Poland 1945-1989: Book Market and Design] (Warszawa, 2014).Mateusz Świetlicki is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wrocław’s Institute of English Studies and Director of the Center for Young People’s Literature and Culture. His most recent book, Next-Generation Memory and Ukrainian Canadian Children’s Historical Fiction: The Seeds of Memory (Routledge, 2023), examines the transnational entanglements of Canada and Ukraine.Agata Zarzycka is an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies (University of Wrocław). She has recently published A Goth Reflection: Self-Fashioning and Popular Culture (Wrocław, 2019). Her research interests include literary studies focused on speculative fiction, gothic studies, game studies focused on video games and role-playing games, fan studies, subcultural and cultural studies.The editors are co-founders and members of The Centre for Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Wrocław.

"The essays in this volume contain impactful, useful, and innovative new approaches to each of the different controversies covered. As a whole, these essays contribute to ongoing discussions in the field, and the essays will also serve individually as vector points for new conversations in the field."- Roberta Seelinger Trites, Illinois State University

• Notes on ContributorsControversy and Children’s Literature: IntroductionAgata Zarzycka, Mateusz Świetlicki and Elżbieta Jamróz-StolarskaPart 1 (G)Local Controversies1 Controversy on the Children’s Book Market in Poland and Its Cultural and Social BackgroundBożena Hojka and Elżbieta Jamróz-Stolarska2 Coming Out: LGBTQ+ Topics and Polish Young Adult LiteratureMonika Woźniak3 Being Controversial in Scandinavia: An Iconotextual Analysis of Selected Norwegian and Danish PicturebooksHanna Dymel-Trzebiatowska4 Political vs. Personal: Gender-Role Formation in the Works of Ukrainian Female Children’s Writers in the 1930sSnizhana Zhygun5 The Controversial Truth: Postmemory and the Great Terror in Yulia Yakovleva’s The Raven’s Children and Eugene Yelchin’s Breaking Stalin’s NoseSylwia Kamińska-Maciąg6 Controversies over the Holocaust and the Greek Civil War: Painful Memories in Greek Children’s BooksMeni Kanatsouli7 Trauma Representation and Aestheticization in North American Young Adult Holocaust LiteratureTalia CrockettPart 2 Transcultural Controversies8 Boys’ Friendship or Something More? Re-Examining Janusz Korczak’s King Matt the First and Its English TranslationsJoanna Dybiec-Gajer9 Annotated Editions as a Misappropriation of the Author’s Voice and of Children’s Reading: Some Polish Editions of Fairy Tales by Charles PerraultBarbara Kaczyńska10 Beguiling Bygones and Relapses into Barbarism: Censoring Old Children’s Literature in the NetherlandsCharlotte van Bergen11 Controversies of Authentic Adolescent Realism in Isabel Quintero’s Gabi, a Girl in Pieces (2014) and Louise O’Neill’s Asking For It (2015)Jennifer Mooney12 “I’m Not a Teapot”: The Controversy of (Post)Humanity in Selected Novels by Neal ShusrermanAnna Bugajska13 “Behind the Bars, No World”: Brecht Evens’ Panther as an Ironic Response to Children’s LiteratureKatarzyna Smyczyńska14 Two-Dad Families in Children’s Nonfiction PicturebooksAngela Yannicopoulou15 The Children’s Literature Scholar as a Two-Headed Creature (Lofting and Damrosch)Anna Czabanowska-WróbelIndex of Persons