MILITARY FICTION FOR CHILDREN OF THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR AS A LITERARY FIELD

Abstract

Background. The phenomenon of military fiction for children had been on the margin of independent Ukraine’s scientific and social discourses before the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Since 2014, writers and publishers have enhanced their activity in this area responding to the needs of the society, particularly to the necessity to explain to children in their language the processes they witness, to the desire to distract them from traumatic experiences or to use books as part of therapeutic intervention.
 Purpose. To arrange the processes occurring in the Ukrainian literary space and connected with military fiction for children in 2014-2023.
 Methods. The sociology of literature approaches have been utilized.
 Results. To the major formants of the literary field of children’s military fiction belong social discourse and information produced by its actants: writers, publishers, literary experts and critics, literary bloggers, online literary platform teams etc., as well as all those interested (parents, children, character prototypes, scholars who help interpret literary works and ensure their appropriate psychological and emotional reception) who are related to literary product interpretation and consumption. Publishing houses’ effort towards filling free genre niches switches to active discussion of children’s books’ therapeutic and awareness-raising role under warfare (how to write it to avoid harming the traumatized child, how to better arrange the reception process, what tips to give to parents). Writers who tell the children about war update textual and receptive strategies. Literary platforms (Barabooka, Chytomo etc.) run discussions and events. Public attention is sustained via interviews with publishers and writers, literature overviews, updating on social media the information about the authors who fight, volunteer, take part in events, meet with children. Children themselves try their hand at creating book-trailers, writing reviews etc. The publishers expand young readers’ access to their products: books (ranging from regular paper books for “young adults” to graphic novels, comics, picture books, words-free books), audiobooks as well as animated movies created on their basis.
 Conclusions and perspectives. Children’s war fiction has highlighted the angle of interdependence of literature and society, which is revealed in the cases of crisis and is connected with the social activity of the parties to the literary process. The use of sociology of literature techniques made it possible to analyze the impact of the literary field actants (writers, publishers, readers and all those interested) on the development of textual strategies, the interaction between literature and society, as well as to trace the match of literary texts to the social discourse and further on, to reflect on the impact of social development.