Book
Talk:
Researching Children's & Young Adults' Literature
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Proposals
Print version
Geneviève
Brisson
UBC, MA
“If Dragons Would Eat Pink Hearts, That Would Be OK”:
Preadolescent Boys’ Paths to Reading
Boys and their
reading, or non-reading, habits have received increasing attention
over the last decade. Through individual and group interviews,
I collected data from 5 preadolescent boys – grades 5 to
7 – to hear their own experiences and thoughts in order to
map the different paths boys take to reading. This presentation
focuses on these boys’ perceptions of reading and readers
as well as the role of agency – one’s ability to adapt
to or resist dominant subject positions – on their reading
paths.
Data show that
interviewees resisted norms and practices of the dominant discourse
among their male friends. They also challenged
some practices or norms to pursue their interests in reading. However,
they did not go as far as to read books labelled girls’ books.
Some of them stated that boys experience pressure to assume gender-appropriate
preferences in order to be accepted by their (male) peers.
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Danya
David
UBC
Journeys
of Faith and Survival: An Examination into Three Jewish Graphic
Novels
My
poster will reflect research from the thesis “Journeys
of Faith and Survival: An Examination into Three Jewish Graphic
Novels”. The research explores journeys of faith and survival
in three Jewish graphic novels: A Contract With God by Will Eisner,
The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar, and We Are On Our Own by Miriam
Katin. In each of these texts, the protagonists struggle with their
faith and relationship with God, as they negotiate challenges as
Jews living in largely unreceptive spaces. Along their journeys,
the protagonists confront God in their own ways to try to make
sense of the role that faith and Judaism play in their lives. Drawing
on basic principles of the relationship between Jew and God, as
well as terms and concepts concerning the aesthetic construction
of comics, this thesis probes into the nature of these journeys
and the impact they have on the protagonists’ physical and
spiritual survival.
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Jocelyn
A Dimm
University of Victoria, PhD
Dealing With Conflict and Diversity through Imaginative Dramatic
Transactions With Young Adult Literature
This poster
presentation is informed by Kreidler’s framework
for a Peaceable Classroom and by personal practice-based study
in the area of drama and young adult literature. This issues-based
research/practice is developed through in-role and out-of-role
activities for young adults. A specific focus on students’ critical
thinking skills is maintained through their embodied experiences
(action) while engaged with diverse characters (multiple perspectives)
in YA fiction.
Full lesson plans are included.
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Pamela Fairfield
UBC Program (Master’s or PhD) Master’s MLIS
Fear and Foliage: The Role of the Forest in the Picture Books
of Molly Bang
The picture
books of Molly Bang are complex constructions where the negotiation
between image and text contains an appropriate
ellipsis that does not distance the pictorial narrative from the
textual story but creates room for the reader to explore the impact
the images produced within an emotional space. We will see that
Molly Bang creates a complete visual experience, likened to that
of a viewing a visual work of art, but complicated and pushed forward
by the embellishment of text. We often think of a book as beginning
with the author, who creates the narrative text. To this the illustrator
adds pictures, enhancing the story’s meaning with visual
representation. But in the picture books of Molly Bang, we see
the classic understanding of illustration as embellishment upturned:
she begins with a picture from which her story unfolds. We will
observe this unconventional presentation of picture-text relations,
by examining the role the forest plays in providing a place of
accommodation for the conveyance of emotional suspense within the
narratives of the following picture books illustrated by Molly
Bang: The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, Goose, Old Mother
Bear, and When Sophie Gets Very Very Angry. In looking at this
selection of four major works by Bang, we find that the relationship
between text and image does not disintegrate meaning in one entity
or the other but each enhances the other’s presence within
a unified whole, achieving communality within the experience of
storytelling.
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Janet Grafton
UBC, MA in Children’s Literature
An
(Un)Earthly Magic: Ecocriticism and Fantasy in Canadian Children’s
Literature
My paper centres
on a question from ecocritical scholar SueEllen Campbell. In
her article on environmental literary criticism, she
asks, “What links blood, land, writing, vision?”. In
two respective faerie-centred tales by Canadian authors Janet McNaughton
and O.R. Melling, An Earthly Knight, the retelling of Scottish
folktale Tam Lin, and The Book of Dreams, an epic fantasy, the
answer is explored through a lens of magic and mystery. Both novels
equate freedom, solace, and salvation with the natural world, in
varying ways and degrees. For McNaughton, the earthly setting is
marred by dark faerie magic, and for Melling, the earth holds natural
magic.
Triumph and
survival in these texts directly relate to a personal link with
nature. Both authors are concerned with preservation,
both of the self and of the world, but the concepts and explorations
of wildness/wilderness within the individual texts differ. My paper
applies environmental literary criticism, that is, ecocriticism,
to explore these differences. An Earthly Knight and The Book of
Dreams have nature at their cores, but whereas McNaughton seeks
to separate magic from nature in her tale, Melling celebrates the
marriage. The complexity of presentation and reception of the natural
world is at the root of both books. At the heart of this paper
is the suggestion that the pairing of children’s literature
and ecocriticism forms an ideal platform from which to discuss
environmental issues and concerns.
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Brianne Grant
UBC, MA in Children’s Literature
Stories
of Us: The History of Trauma in Aboriginal Children’s
Literature
The study of
trauma literature for children began after the emergence of Holocaust
literature produced for children and youth. Wolfgang
Iser comments that “literature is a mechanism by which children
can face the inhuman in a very human way,” and yet many argue
that this literature can traumatize or needlessly harm a child
reader. This presentation explores the issues of trauma literature
for children in a Canadian context. By analyzing the research on
trauma in Holocaust literature for children and applying it to
the Aboriginal literature about residential schools, the presentation
will assess the features and outcomes of this genre.
The children’s literature of trauma adds depth to our understanding
of history and culture. Authors, such as Nicola Campbell, Larry
Loyie and Michel Noël are excavating complicated issues from
Canadian history, and in doing so are exposing children to an often
unheard part of Canadian identity. In exploring trauma issues in
Canada, these authors are equipping children with a holistic understanding
of our story as a nation.
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Won Kim
UBC, MA in Children’s Literature
Language through literature: Real language experience in an adult
ESL classroom
A linear view of SLA process is still dominant in adult ESL classes
where linguistically-based meaning-making at a sentence level is
the focus of instruction and learners are regarded as a passive
information processor. These classrooms presuppose the separation
of language and social context as well as of language competence
(i.e., language learning) and language performance (i.e., language
use).
Johnson (2004)
proposes an alternative approach to SLA based on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory and Bakhtin’s
Literary Theory. In this framework, SLA is regarded as a social
issue and
social aspects of meaning-making where interactions play a major
role. Thus, exposure to speech genres and discursive practices
associated with social contexts is emphasized.
This presentation
reports on a descriptive case study of ESL instruction with adolescent
literature for advanced-level ESL adults in Canada.
The study investigated 1) the nature of the instruction, and 2)
students’ language learning experiences. Data was collected
through class observations, interviews, questionnaires, and written
documents.
Findings reveal
that the essence of Johnson’s SLA model
is manifested in literature-based instruction where both language
learning and use co-occur in interactive practices with literature
that serves not only as a resource for language as speech, but
also as a source for meaningful interactions. The study also highlights
that this content-rich instruction with quality comprehensible
input (Krashen, 1985) fostered contextualized, real language experiences
while promoting students’ sense of independence as language
learner. The study concludes with practical implications for using
children’s and adolescent literature in adult L2 classrooms
of different proficiency levels.
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Shula Klinger
The Kingdom of Strange
My presentation
will explore the notion of “children’s” literature,
as discussed by the protagonist in my new novel. “The Kingdom
of Strange” introduces readers to Thisbe, an avid reader,
a passionate writer and observer of humans in their natural habitat
(Vancouver, BC). A quirky, introverted grade nine student, Thisbe
has written a great deal but shared her work with nobody. Then
she is given the chance to discuss her writing online, with a student
at another school and a world of opportunities – and surprises
and life lessons – opens up to her.
Thisbe starts
her journey into adulthood through her questions about reading
and writing. What is children’s literature?
What is Young Adult literature? How can you tell whether you’re
a child or a YA? Can you be a child and a YA at the same time,
in the same body? As the child of two academics, her writing is
peppered with literary references; these references offer clues
to the real identity of her online correspondent. When the correspondent’s
true identity is revealed, Thisbe is faced with her own shortcomings
and takes refuge with her grandmother and several helpings of cheesecake.
Thisbe opens the book quite convinced of her supremacy in a kingdom
of words. Gradually, she learns that however talented a writer
one is, one can only be the guardians of words, not their rulers.
Life is more ambiguous, meaning is more fleeting and a full understanding
of our selves takes compassion and gentleness, however sharp our
wits may be.
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Kathryn E. Shoemaker
UBC, PhD
Where
the ‘New’ Comes From: A Hallidayan Semiotic
Analysis of Illustrations in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild
Things Are
I will present
a close semiotic analysis of the realization of ‘Theme
and ‘New’ in the illustrations of Maurice Sendak’s
Where the Wild Things Are.
In English
Halliday writes that “the clause has the character
of a message… and is organized as a message by having a distinct
status assigned to one part of it.”(2004) ‘Theme; is
the ‘point of departure for the information that follows,
the ‘Rheme’. So ‘Theme’ is first, for it
is the thematic followed by all the rest, the “Rheme;. Together
they form a message. The ‘New’ is one half of M.A.K.
Halliday’s ‘Information Unit’, which consists
of ‘New’ and ‘Given’. I use a semiotic
model ‘inspired and informed’ by O’Toole, Kress
and van Leeuwen who credit M.A.K. Halliday’s systemic functional
theory of language for ‘inspiring and informing’ their
work.
Theme and Rheme
is speaker or narrator oriented, ‘Given’ and ‘New’ is
listener/viewer oriented. Looking at these two systems, the system
of information, ‘Given’ and ‘New’ and the
system of theme there is a ‘close semantic relationship between
the two systems. In the picturebook that close semantic relationship
extends into the images. However, the two systems operate differently
in the multimodal text of the picturebook from how they operate
in a strictly verbal text.
So looking
at a picturebook, particularly looking at the narrator’s
pattern of ‘Theme’ and ‘Rheme’ in the verbal
text and looking at the patterns of ‘New’ and ‘Gven’ in
the visual text suggests that in Where the Wild Things Are the
verbal ‘Themes’ become the ‘New’ in the
system of information in the visual images. This presentation discusses
that patterning in three double page spreads.
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Pamela
Swanigan
Prospective Ph.D student, Roehampton University
UnAmerican
Immortalities: Disruptive Depictions of Eternal Life in 20th-Century
Children's Fantasy
In
this paper, I propose to outline my line of study for my prospective
Ph.D in Children's Literature,
which will analyse the un-American nature of immortality in the fantasy
novels The Brothers
Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren, and Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt,
as well as, to a lesser
degree, works by Ursula K. LeGuin, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Diana Wynne
Jones. More specifically,
I plan to explore how the depictions of immortality in these works
disrupt American assumptions
about, and conceptions of, eternal life. In
order to claim that these portrayals are essentially "un-American",
I must of course define what
constitutes "American" forms
of immortality. I hold these to be two: the post-death mode, namely
the Heaven of Protestant Christianity; and the pre-death mode,
namely immortality via technological,
pharmaceutical, medical, and other "geroscientific" means. The
Brothers Lionheart, in which each of two young brothers commits heroic
suicide to save the
other, presents the counterpoint to the first mode, by portraying
immortality less as afterlife than
as otherworld, and detaching this other world from morality: it is
afflicted by political tyranny
and achievable equally by good, evil, and quite ordinary people.
Tuck Everlasting, through
the inadvertently and disastrously immortal family Tuck, mounts
an urgent argument against
the second, expounding the deep folly of trying to remove ourselves
from the natural cycle
by artificial means-or, indeed, through any of the manifold types
of exemptionism that spurred the founding of America, and still lie deeply embedded
in the American national psyche.
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Karen
Taylor
UBC, MA in Children’s Literature
Nature’s Place in Childhood: An Ecocritical Exploration
of Kit Pearson’s Guests of War Trilogy
The aim of
my presentation is to examine Kit Pearson’s Guests
of War trilogy through the theoretical lens of ecocriticism. Ecocriticism
questions our understanding of and relationship to the environment
and to environmental concerns as portrayed in literary texts. By
performing a close reading and applying ecocritical theory to the
textual analysis of these books, I explore the ways in which the
text constructs ideas of nature and how these constructions rely
on the nature-child relationship.
A child’s ecological or environmental attitude is influenced
by early childhood experiences in nature, social and media influences,
and school curricula. Moreover, as W. H. New argues in Land Sliding,
our concept of nature is a socially conditioned phenomenon. Thus,
literary portrayals of nature are important to examine in order
to understand our relationship to the present state of the environment
and the ways in which we remain part of the problem or become part
of the solution. Because books have a powerful influence on the
intellectual development and perceptions of children they have
the potential to be an important medium through which children
develop their ethical stance towards nature. Given the scarcity
of scholarly ecocriticism on Canadian children’s literature,
Pearson’s popular trilogy provides excellent fodder for ecocritical
examination.
The principles of ecology rely on the understanding that all things
living and non-living exist in relation to each other; therefore,
my research moves across disciplines to draw upon theoretical sources
from the domains of ecology and environmentalism, childhood culture,
and literary studies.
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Celina Vergel de Dios
UBC, PhD
Using Children's Books as a Springboard for Discussion about Research
on Bullying
Canadian researchers
consider bullying to be a “widespread,
persistent, and serious problem occurring in our schools” (Hawkins
et al., 2001, p. 512). As a strategy to deal with childhood bullying,
the idea has been proposed to use children’s books as the
focal point for communicating about this problem (Gregory & Vessey,
2004). Just as educators must be critical about any bullying prevention
or intervention program that they implement with their students,
a review of children’s books written about bullying provided
to students needs to be conducted. A tip that educators can borrow
from the approach of bibliotherapy is that the books about bullying
that they plan to use should contain characters that children can
identify with. Additionally, research dictates that programs that
teach children social skills including empathy, prosocial behaviours,
and friendship building are effective in reducing bullying (DeRosier,
2004; Frey et al., 2005; Menesini et al., 2003). Similarly, books
on bullying should contain such elements that make them useful
in dealing with the problem. Following those recommendations, a
review of six children’s books on bullying was conducted
in this paper. Three exemplary books were identified, namely Secret
of the Peaceful Warrior, Pinky and Rex and the Bully, and My Secret
Bully, along with three problematic readings titled Bully Trouble,
Just a Bully, and Loudmouth George and the Sixth-Grade Bully. Support
for and against each book is discussed with respect to whether
the contents of the books correspond with what research has found
to be effective approaches to resolving bullying.
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Elizabeth Walker
UBC, MA in Children’s Literature
Bakhtin
at Boarding School: Heteroglossia and Carnival in Willans and
Searle’s
Molesworth Series
Stories set
in boarding schools have been a literary phenomenon since the
nineteenth century, but few have been as memorable or
as daring as those featuring Nigel Molesworth, denizen of St. Custards,
and creation of writer Geoffrey Willans and illustrator Ronald
Searle. Molesworth appears in four books, Down With Skool! (1953),
How To Be Topp (1954), Whizz For Atomms (1956) and Back In The
Jug Agane (1959). All four offer an irreverent take on the standard
boarding school story, and are considered to be both children’s
books and books about childhood, for they appeal to both audiences
and offer unflinching satire on the private school system and the
society of post World War Two Britain. Furthermore, they are ripe
with potential for Bakhtinian analysis, because they display several
hallmarks of heteroglossia and carnivalesque discourses. More specifically,
Willans and Searle’s first Molesworth book, Down With Skool!
epitomizes Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia with its multiple
voices. Whizz For Atomms likewise contains numerous grotesque and
carnivalesque elements. In both cases, the characters in these
stories use Bakhtinian concepts as a means of resistance to the
institutional discourses inherent in a boarding school setting.
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Kari-Lynn Winters
UBC, PhD
Canadian
picture books: Constituting and interrupting Canada’s
individual and national ideologies
This study examines 200 Canadian picture books (from 1970 to 2007),
investigating how representations of print literacy (e.g. writing
a letter, reading a newspaper, and so on) reflect Canadian ideologies
of literacy and literature. Results demonstrate that books do,
to some extent, shape who we are as Canadians. At times these representations
affirm our ideologies and reflect our beliefs and values; at other
times they challenge us to re-constitute our identities and question
our national identity. Texts intervene in our lives. As readers
of picture books we participate in literacy practices, dialoguing
with the values and meanings that are depicted in the book itself
and also in our own socio-cultural beliefs.
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Please
send proposals questions to: gradconference.submission@gmail.com
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Department
of Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education
2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
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The University of British Columbia, all rights reserved.
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