Around 2007, several self-proclaimed norm-critical publishing companies were established in Sweden. This caused a long debate in the daily press, where some critics compared the ”norm-critical” books to propaganda. The debate indicates a conflict between an aesthetic and a didactic approach to children’s literature. Another lively debate with similar critique took off when Kivi & Monsterhund (Kivi and Monsterdog, 2012) by Jesper Lundqvist and Bettina Johansson was published – a picturebook where the protagonist is referred to by a gender-neutral prounoun. The purpose of this article is to problematise the prevailing view on self-proclaimed norm-critical children’s literature and its didactic relationship to the reader. The reception, the paratexts, and the book itself are analysed using Torben Weinreich’s and Clémentine Beauvais’ different definitions of didactics, Gérard Genette’s view on pararatexts, Maria Nikolajeva’s theories on picturebooks, and Judith Butler’s view on gender as performative. The book, and its didactic relationship to the reader, is found to be much more complex and conflicting than suggested by the reception and the paratexts.
This article discusses how feelings about and experiences of sexuality and pleasure are depicted in children’s books by Swedish author Kerstin Thorvall. It is well known that Thorvall wrote about sexuality in an outspoken and unconventional way for adults in the 1970s. Less known is that she already had touched upon these topics in her novels for young children in the 1960s and early 70s. This article analyses four of those children’s novels and argues that one has to use a broad definition of sexuality in order to capture the way children´s literature articulate erotic experiences. Hélène Cixous’ concept of “feminine jouissance” is therefore used to analyse the way Thorvall writes about lust and pleasure. This “feminine jouissance” is not directed towards a specific person or centered on specific parts of the body (as is the “masculine monosexual jouissance” according to Cixous) but is instead directed towards a variety of objects and centred on the whole body, involving all senses. The article also investigates how the relation between adult (hetero)sexuality and children’s imagined innocence is challenged in Thorvall’s writings, drawing on Tison Pugh’s queer theoretical study from 2010 on heterosexuality in children’s literature. Thorvall’s depiction of sexuality crosses boundaries between adults and children – and between adult literature and children’s literature – since the language used to express pleasure is the same whether Thorvall writes for young people or adults.
In contemporary Swedish children's literature, mylings and baby farmers make frequent appearances. A myling is the ghost of a murdered child, destined to haunt and expose its assassin. Baby farmers were women paid to take care of unwanted children but sometimes killed them, either directly or through neglect. Both motifs indirectly address issues of motherhood and mothering, and the aim of this article is to discuss how they are represented in children's literature. In research about motherhood, being a mother is often distinguished from the act of mothering. Motherhood is associated with a biological discourse whilst mothering refers to social practices of care that are associated with the mother but may also be carried out by other people. Both mylings and baby farmers address this distinction but in various ways. In folklore about mylings, the biological mother is traditionally singled out as the infant's killer. This misogynistic discourse is, to some extent, renegotiated in contemporary non-fictional works about Nordic mythology for children. In fictional works, though, the mother is still portrayed as the sole caregiver for the child and the only one to blame for its death, thus disregarding the distinction between motherhood and mothering. Baby farmers are neither mothers nor are they mothering. Children's novels set in the past describe the baby farmer as part of a societal industry where a discrepancy between motherhood and mothering is displayed: children are born but not cared for. However, the burden of guilt is shared amongst various social actors, including the fathers. In Gothic fiction set in a contemporaneous society, the baby farmer reveals a deficit in mothering altogether and offers neglect – an anti-mothering – in its place.
This study investigates the uses and functions of swear words in children’s literature, analyzing Ulf Stark’s Rymlingarna (The Runaways, 2018) and Oskar Kroon’s Överallt och ingenstans (Everywhere and Nowhere, 2020). In both novels there are characters swearing recurringly, even though swear words are usually not frequently used in literature for young children. A starting point for the article is that the swear words seem to be important in the stories, that the function is not only to underline emotions, or create realism, but also to contribute to the themes of the books. First, the functions of swearing in language and literature are presented, and similarities with functions of humor are pointed out. The study shows that the use of swear words affects both what is being told, and how; they contribute simultaneously to the aesthetics and pedagogy of the novels. Through swear words, characters and close relationships are portrayed. Norms are challenged, and swearing is sometimes part of gaining agency and creating a room of one’s own for the characters. This also means that swearing affects subjectivity and how different characters come to understand themselves and others in the world. Finally, the swear words can be seen as connected to the theme, which in both novels discusses how we can continue to live, through grief and loss of loved ones.