Pequeña memoria recobrada. Libros infantiles del exilio del 39 (review)

Between 1920 and 1936, Spain experienced a period of cultural blossoming, which was abruptly cut short by the Spanish Civil War and the defeat of the democratic republican forces in 1939. Many artists, including renowned children's book authors and illustrators, spent the following four decades in exile while the Franco dictatorship was in power. In their host countries - mainly Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba - well-known names such as Antoniorrobles, Salvador Bartolozzi, Lola Anglada, or Elena Fortún were able to continue to publish. There has been very little research on this Spanish children's literature in exile. It was the aim of this volume edited under the direction of Ana Pelegrin, author and scholar of children's literature who died in 2008, to close this gap at least in part.

The first section offers three informative survey articles on narrative literature (A. Pelegrín), illustration (A. Urdiales), and children's theatre (M. V. Sotomayor, as well as contributions on individual authors including Anna Muriá (M. Desclot) and Xosé Neiras Vilas (B. A. Roig). There are also articles on specific aspects, such as the work of those writers who had remained in Spain and were forced to live in inner exile (N. Martín Rogero). This rather eclectic, but overall very enlightening, first part is followed by a bibliography of 400 titles including reproductions of the book covers. The main section of this bibliography chronicles the titles that were published in the three main host countries between 1939 and 1977. The preceding and following sections take stock of the titles published between 1920 and 1938 or after the end of the dictatorship, respectively. Fully aware of the difficult nature of this kind of research, the editors do not claim to present a comprehensive list of all the titles. Nevertheless, they have compiled an impressive bibliography, which one would love to see accompanied by annotations in the next updated edition to learn more about the individual titles.

All in all, the volume deserves to be honored as a pioneering study that lays the groundwork for future research on this important chapter of Spanish children's literature - a chapter which also had significant impact on some of the developments in Latin America and which also deserves further investigation.