Enfants en temps de guerre et littératures de jeunesse: XXe–XXIe siècles (Children in times of war and youth literatures: XXth–XXIst centuries) (review)

This collection of essays proceeds from an October 2012 symposium held in Paris, organized by Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), Centre National de la Littérature pour la Jeunesse (CILJ), Université Blaise Pascal, and Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures et La Sociopoétique (CELIS). This joint event highlighted the importance of children’s literature as one site of historical and cultural inquiry. Divided into four major sections that deal with the Great War, the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), WWII, and recent conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, this event convened a myriad of participants: Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, illustrators, editors of youth literature, translators, librarians, historians, and scholars in the field of Italian, Spanish, African, British, Arabic, French, and Germanic literatures. The interdisciplinary scope of this symposium pointed to the value of representations of war from the child’s unique perspective, or “à hauteur d’enfant” (13). This key concept sets the focus on the discussion of key fictional works: autobiographical novels, picture books, illustrated magazines, documentaries, newspapers, and plays that incorporate themes once considered taboo.

Part 1 gathers five essays written during WWI in Italy, Germany, and France. Mariella Colin analyzes Golia’s Pentolino e la grande guerra(1915) and Visentini’s Primavera Italiche(1915), as well as such newspapers as Corriere dei Piccoliwhich profile the many images of the child as hero or heroine. Bérénice Zuno discusses the proliferation of pictures books as one kind of leisure activity for children in Germany. She shows how these works carry counter-hegemonic discourses and denounce the absurdity of the war. Hans-Heino Ewers focuses on author Hulda Micals’s use of her heroine Julchen Waldebauer to portray her own traumatic experience in Germany in the form of a fictional biography. In her essay on the series Les Livres Roses de la Guerre(1915–19), edited by Larousse, Marie Puren discusses the child as the ideal hero who sacrifices himself for France. Marion Pignot concludes, giving importance to the theme of violence as one new facet of children’s literature.

Part 2 deals with the cultural representations of the Spanish Civil War that characterized major nationalistic graphic journals and literature for youth. Didier Corderot discusses the birth of one major magazine entitled Pelayos(1936) and its indoctrination of the Carlist youth. He juxtaposes it to a concurring publication named Flecha(1936), which advocated the Falangist doctrine promoted by General Franco. Marie Franco addresses issues in an autobiographical novel written during the conflict: Celia en la revolución, by Elena Fortún, became accessible to readers only in 1987, well after Franco’s death. Both the realism of the setting and the presence of a teenage female character attest to the author’s own experience of the civil war. Finally, Euriell Gobbé-Mévellec analyzes how the memory of the Spanish Civil War is recaptured in five picture books published since 2000, pointing to common aesthetic patterns in portraying the horror of this war.

Part 3 presents six essays that deal with narrations of resistance during WWII. It begins with two compelling testimonies by Polish Jewish survivors and children’s authors Régine Lilensten and Isaac Millman. Sylvie Martin-Mercier looks further into these narrations of resistance and resilience in Italy with the study of Guido Petter’s Ragazzi di una banda senza nome(1972) and Nel rifugio segreto(1998). Rose-May Pham Dinh delves into recent fantasy books from England: Robert Swindell’s Blitzed(2007), narrated by the young hero George, and Michael Cronin’s Against the Day(1998). Anne Chassagnol demonstrates how a teddy bear becomes the narrative voice adopted by Alsatian writer Tomi Ungërer to depict the war. Milena Šubrtov...