According to Haunt, “Iran has a head start over most of its neighboring countries in the establishment of schools, but progress were slow, and there were comparatively few books written for children in Persian” and so schools had to rely on translating books from other countries (2004, p784) . The first narratives for young people in Iran were published in Keyhane-bacheha, which was a weekly magazine that began publishing in 1956. In addition, there emerged other authors such as Nader Ebrahimi who published books for Iranian children and there were handful of youth novels that depicted young people and their relation to urban areas. But a lack of attention to the history and identity of Iran through the publication of youth literature has been criticized by many Iranian authors, especially in recent years. For instance,(According to ), Nasser Takmil Homayoun, who is an Iranian historian, in a panel session about Iranian identity, stated that “Identity is not just culture and history . In fact, physical space is also important. For instance, when I think of Ghazvin( my home town) I remember our old house in which we lived , and its valuable architecture. The rooms and niches. These items also shape my identity. Even now, Ghazvin means very much to me” (Takmil Homayoun, 2005,p.11). Because of the lack of published Iranian literature for children, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun), initiated a project called “Today’s Young People” in March 2009, The aim of the project was to write and publish books specifically for Iranian adolescents. Consequently, 20 books were published by the institute. One of the critiques of these new works for youth is of their lack of descriptions or mentions of Iranian spaces. In September 2015, panel sessions of the “Representation of Tehran in young people’s literature” were held by the support of Shahr publications and the Revayat institute. One of the panelists, Mostafa Kharaman, a well known Iranian children’s writer argued that “the problem with our contemporary literature is that the location is not obvious. It is not clear where the story happens. While we all know that we have various lifestyles in Iranian cities,these differences are not represented in young adults’ stories. Mohittababtabaei, a well known Tehranologist, observed that in these published stories, as well as in school books for young people, Iranian streets, squares and other spaces have not been portrayed. The spaces that are explained in these books seem to be “nowhere.” While we all know that people in different cities in Iran have different lifestyles according to their culture. So, Tehranians have different way of living from people in other cities of Iran. Mohittababtabaei further argued that some descriptions of the old and famous streets and mosques of Tehran should be incorporated in the school books so that young people can learn about the urban history of Tehran. So physical space is often absent from these young adult novels but, as I argue, it should be one of the main elements in new fiction for youth in order to help young people know their history, and as a key element in identity construction.
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Oct 13, 2017
Kris Vavasour 
Open Access
