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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Despite the difficulties of functioning in a society at war, Ukrainian children’s literature has been experiencing an upsurge over the recent years, as it responds to urgent needs of bringing up a younger generation in critical times. This panel explores one specific segment of children’s literature - publications aimed at a preschool- and elementary-school-age audience, particularly, picturebooks. Presentations in the panel go beyond a traditional understanding of literature for the youngest as only entertaining/whimsical and/or conducive to developing reading skills. Instead, the panelists analyze contemporary Ukrainian picturebooks as a source for coping mechanisms for the recent/on-going traumatic experiences and an invitation to partake in the community sharing a cultural identity and a collective memory narrative. Svetlana Efimova’s presentation focuses on Ukrainian war-themed picturebooks, analyzing how the authors use a combination of visual and textual components to create a therapeutic effect and provide solace for the traumatic experiences the children might have first-hand or by proxy of growing up in the war-ridden society. Anastasia Ulanowicz analyzes adaptations of Ukrainian canonical literary works as picturebooks that both connect the new generation of readers to the classical heritage and repurpose it into newly relevant symbolic capital in the context of the on-going cultural decolonisation. Daria Semenova’s paper looks at the Stories about History series of picturebooks as an invitation to partake in the community of memory that draws from the past lessons for a mutually-enriching culturally diverse and environmentally-conscious future.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Sergii Gurbych, Vilnius U (Lithuania)

Papers

• Visuality and Therapeutic Effects in Ukrainian Picturebooks about War - Svetlana Efimova, Ludwig-Maximilians-U Munich (Germany)

• Remembering the Past and Re-Membering the Present: Reading Contemporary Picturebook Adaptations of Ukrainian Literary Classics as Acts of Resistance - Anastasia Maria Ulanowicz, U of Florida

• Illustrated History for the Pre-school Ukrainians: 'Stories about History' and the Communal Memory Narrative - Daria Semenova, Vilnius U (Lithuania)

Discussant

• Mateusz Swietlicki, U of Wrocław (Poland)