Illustrated History for the Pre-school Ukrainians: 'Stories about History' and the Communal Memory Narrative

• In Event: Contemporary Ukrainian Children’s Literature and Picturebooks: Adapting the Lessons of the Past, Facing the Challenges of the Present

Abstract

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, newly independent nations got a chance to revise the narratives that during the Soviet period insisted on development of the Union-wide “Soviet people” and class struggle. Along the school textbooks, literary production for children and young adults became an important means of conveying these revised messages to new generations of Ukrainians. Since 2020, the publishing house “Portal” has been publishing the series of picturebooks titled “Stories about history” produced for pre-school and elementary-school children. Authored by different writers, the books in the series cover events from the pre-historic times to contemporary days, and all include richly illustrated text, commentary on historic context, and a psychologist’s advise to the parents on how to discuss the stories with the children.
My analysis of the series will gravitate around two main features. First, the series authors abstain from presenting history as a teleological development of a group destined to eventually become the modern nation that they identify with. Instead, the historic events that took place on what is now Ukraine are presented through a variety of culturally diverse voices of representatives of different ethnic groups that inhabited these lands. Though authors don’t entirely obscure the fact that sometimes interests of these groups clashed, they focus on moments of mutually enriching encounters, instead of perpetuating any derogatory stereotypes that these groups might have historically had about one another.
Second, authors of the series dedicate a lot of attention to environmental history. Animals and plants that surround humans feature in the series not only following fairy-tale conventions, as a way to talk about human traits and society, and not only in the symbolic meaning suggested by myths and legends, but also as elements of the surroundings that play a significant role in how humans interact with the space they inhabit.
Moreover, comparing the thirteen currently published books marketed as appropriate for the age 4-7 to the four additional books that follow the same conception but are marketed as appropriate for the age 7-11, I will explore the features shared by the books in the series that characterize ways of age-appropriate communication about historic events.

Author

• Daria Semenova, Vilnius U (Lithuania)