Children's Narratives Research Articles

”Tänk om Egon tar min cykel”

Concentrating on Doris drar (Doris Leaves, 2015), Pudlar och pommes (Poodles and Fries, 2016), and Vitvivan och Gullsippan (Vitvivan and Gullsippan, 2021), this article explores how Pija Lindenbaum utilizes the artistic possibilities of the picturebook medium to communicate with the child reader. Following James Phelan, my investigation goes beyond a static and universal understanding of narratives to seeing them as context-determined and composed in relation to a rhetorical audience. Mike Cadden points out that this rhetorical turn is particularly striking when it comes to children’s literature, as the targeted reader by definition is a child and narratives for children often use specific strategies for more or less well-defined purposes. Taking my cue from rhetorical approaches to literature, I argue that a focus on plots and conflicts enhances our understanding of reading as ethical meaning-making. Conflicts in modern children’s literature are regularly perceived from the child’s point of view in ways that are essential for the transaction of meaning. In my terminology, the conflict constitutes an aesthetic-pedagogical node connecting the reader with the evaluative perspective of the narrative. Addressing the dynamics between text, image, and medium in Lindenbaum’s picturebooks, this article argues that plots and conflicts are pivotal for the reader’s involvement, directing interest and emotional engagement. The plot not only invites the reader to the fictional world, but it also stimulates a context-bound meaning-making involving thoughts, feelings, and values.

The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable, by Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus

<i>The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable</i>, by Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus

Fences, Goods and “Police”: Figurations of the Border in Manjira Saha's Chhotoder Border

ABSTRACT In this article, I closely read Manjira Saha’s 2018 volume Chhotoder Border. a collection of children's line drawings and short narratives collated from school children in the India- Bangladesh borderlands. Certain recurring tropes emerge from these rough drawings and short descriptions, rife with spelling mistakes. The border, an English word repeatedly transcribed in Bengali, does not need an introduction or justification in the lives of these children of the borderlands–the materiality of the border is represented through barbed wire fences, through the “police” who are at once scary and helpful, and the repeated, casual reference to trafficking in goods. I identify the materiality and the affective dimensions of the border through the narratives and drawings in Chhotoder Border. This article analyses the linguistic and visual texts collected by Saha in the volume to understand the framing of the materiality of the Indo- Bangladesh border as well as its affective import among the students who are the contributors to Saha's volume. In so doing, it contributes to the burgeoning discourse around the “cultural aspect of borders”. By investigating the “figurations” or narrative tropes/themes present in these border narratives this article furthers the understanding of discursive construction and circulation of borders.

“I do not remember… You are reminding me now!”: Children's difficult experiences during forensic interviews about online sexual solicitation

BackgroundForensic interviews for children who have undergone online sexual solicitation (OSS) constitute a unique setting compared to other forms of child sexual abuse (CSA). In these cases, the interviewer holds concrete evidence of the abuse in the form of pictures or texts. During the interview, interviewers use these materials to advance the data collection regarding the abuse, a practice that may significantly influence the child's wellbeing. ObjectiveThe current study aims to explore children's experiences during forensic interviews concerning OSS. Participants and settingThe sample included 20 Jewish children in Israel who were referred to and participated in a forensic investigation. MethodsA thematic qualitative methodology was used to analyze the children's narratives. ResultsThe findings demonstrate the children's difficulties when confronted with materials related to the abuse. The children detailed the different ways the interview challenged their wellbeing, including visualizing and verbalizing the abuse, new insights, and being videotaped. ConclusionsThe findings in the current study emphasized the intrinsic challenges that children face in OSS forensic interviews resulting from the tension between the interviewer's need to collect details about the abuse and the child's desire to forget it. Practical ramifications pertaining to these threats to the child's wellbeing, future recommendations, and limitations of the study will be discussed.

“Decolonizing” the minds of children in Africa: Youssef in Egypt and Achebe in Nigeria

PurposeThis paper aims to shed light on how children's literature in Africa deserves to be studied because African writers “decolonize” the minds of African children and children and adults around the world.Design/methodology/approachThis paper defines children's literature from an African perspective and the “decolonization of the mind.” This is done to examine how two African writers provide narratives for children inspired by their cultures. They deal with themes, characters and symbols that interest children and adults.FindingsAchebe and Youssef crossed many borders: the world of children and adults, animals and humans, vice and virtue, supernatural and real. Their stories take the reader on journeys that involve enriching, engaging and inspiring adventures.Research limitations/implicationsYoussef and Achebe are prolific writers. Providing a survey of what is available in Arabic and Nigerian literature for children, is beyond the scope of this paper.Practical implicationsThis paper sends a message to those in charge of the curriculum in schools in Egypt, the Arab countries, Africa and the world at large: decolonize the syllabi in schools because the world is not black and white. Literature for children that encourages critical thinking is available by African writers in Egypt, Nigeria and elsewhere.Social implicationsThe works discussed show that African writers are creative, and their works inspire the African child with pride in his/her identity, culture and heritage.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, no one has compared Egyptian and Nigerian literature for children before. Youssef and Achebe provide evidence that “Good literature gives the child a place in the world … and the world a place in the child.” – Astrid Lindgren.

Narratives by bilingual children: a tale of strengths and growth during kindergarten

ABSTRACT Given their significance in daily life and frequent inclusion in clinical and educational assessments, children’s narrative abilities merit investigation. The present study examines the narratives of children acquiring an additional language, adding to the more abundant studies of monolingual children. Sixty kindergartners (mean age 68 months) residing in Quebec, Canada participated. All spoke a minoritized language at home, and were being instructed in French, the majority language, at school. The children told stories in French based on pictures from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (Schneider, Dubé, and Hayward, 2005) in late fall or early winter, and again in spring. Their stories were subsequently analyzed for their macrostructural features. Despite limited exposure to French prior to kindergarten, the majority of children were able to communicate the central problem in the story, characters’ attempts to resolve the problem, and outcomes of those attempts. Furthermore, the children’s scores increased from time 1 to time 2 overall, and for four of eight story grammar elements. The higher scores were due to higher scores on elements as well as the emergence of new elements in children’s stories at time 2. The findings can help guide expectations for narrative growth among emerging bilingual children and inform instruction.

The Hidden Prophet Bursting Forth: John the Baptist’s Appearing According to Luke

This study offers a fresh reading of John the Baptist’s infancy and childhood narratives in the Gospel of Luke. It argues that Luke utilizes the motif of “hiddenness” to create tension so that John bursts forth into his public ministry in Israel from a place of obscurity. John suddenly appears in public to prepare the way for the messiah. This reading offers for a unifying concept of “concealing-then-revealing” which provides an explanatory lens for several opaque textual units in Luke’s Gospel.

Narratives of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Narratives of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The contribution of mother‐father‐child interactions to children's emotion narratives

AbstractParents' sensitivity during interactions with their children has been associated with children's emotion narratives elicited using story completion tasks, but almost all of this research focused on mothers and was based on a dyadic, parent‐child focus. The goal of the present study was to expand this research by studying triadic, mother‐father‐child interactions and their associations with children's narratives. Seventy‐one families with their 4.5‐year‐old children were observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP) procedure to assess Family Cooperation, and children were administered the MacArthur Story‐Stem Battery (MSSB) to assess Coherence, Parental Representations, and Engagement with the task. Regression analyses indicated that controlling for children's Narrative Competence and Effortful Control, children who were part of more cooperative family interactions produced narratives that were more coherent, and they were more engaged during the task. No associations were found with children's representations of parents. Directions for future studies as well as clinical implications are discussed.

Short report. Narrative competence in Italian preschool children with sex chromosome trisomies

BackgroundThe neuropsychological profile of children with sex chromosome trisomies [SCTs] is frequently characterised by delays and impairments in language development. However, no studies so far have specifically investigated their narrative competence. AimsThe aim of the study was to analyse the oral narrative competence of preschool children with SCTs due to the importance of this skill for language development and learning abilities. Methods and proceduresParticipants were 34 Italian children with SCTs one-to-one matched by age and sex to typically developing [TD] children. A storytelling task, the Narrative Competence Task, was used to assess the macrostructural and microstructural features of the children's narratives. Outcomes and resultsChildren with SCTs showed significantly lower scores than TD peers in all the narrative indices considered, except for mental state lexicon and story length in words. Conclusions and implicationsThe problems found in narrative competence confirmed the existence of difficulties in the language development of children with SCTs. Narrative difficulties could affect these children's future learning skills and academic achievements.

Do Katie and Connor tell better stories than Aaliyah and Jamaal? Teachers’ perceptions of children's oral narratives as a function of race and narrative quality

While seminal research suggests that White teachers are more likely to judge the oral narratives of Black children less favorably than stories told by White children, less attention has been paid to the role of narrative quality in the perceptions teachers form of these complex discourse skills. Further, few studies have examined the extent to which Black and White teachers differ in their perceptions of children's oral narrative skills. To address these gaps in the literature, the current study used mixed methods to investigate the role of narrative quality in Black and White teachers’ perceptions of children's oral narrative skills. We presented teachers with a higher-quality narrative and a lower-quality narrative as told by hypothetical children with stereotypical Black or White names. We asked teachers to rate the narratives along several indicators and share their impressions of the child storytellers. Results indicated that Black and White teachers rated Black and White children's narratives similarly for the higher-quality narratives, but differed in their ratings when the narratives were of lower quality. While there were similarities in the impressions Black and White teachers formed of the child storytellers, there were qualitative differences in how Black and White teachers described their impressions of the child storytellers, particularly for the lower-quality narratives. Given the importance of children's oral narrative skills for literacy development, the implications for instruction, professional development, and workforce diversity are discussed.

Narrative Competence in Pretense Play and Stories

The purpose of the present study was to explore a method for analyzing children's narratives in pretense play and replica stories. A theoretical framework was derived from Bruner (1990) and Fein (1989). This framework served to construct the Realistic-Imaginal Scale (RIS) which incorporated behavioral components appearing in the relevant empirical literature. The scale includes 17 items grouped into 4 categories and measures narratives on a realistic-imaginary continuum. A limited attempt to test the applicability of the RIS, using pretense play episodes of Israeli kindergarten children, and the replica stories of US preschoolers, revealed well-distributed scores correlated with Applebee's narrative organization scores. The scale yielded high inter-scorer reliability. Distributions of scores showed a striking resemblance between the two culturally and contextually different samples. The strong theoretical framework of the RIS makes it a promising tool for the analysis of young children's narrative competence, thus providing a potent tool for theoretical and research.

Storybook Worlds Made Real: Essays on the Places Inspired by Children's Narratives ed. by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West

Reviewed by: Storybook Worlds Made Real: Essays on the Places Inspired by Children's Narratives ed. by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West Jackie Young (bio) Storybook Worlds Made Real: Essays on the Places Inspired by Children's Narratives. Edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West. McFarland, 2022. Think back to your favorite story book. I easily imagine myself in my grandparents' house with my favorite copy of The Lord of The Rings, in their yard pretending my yellow lab was a Ring Wraith chasing after me. I embarrassingly fabricated images of Aragorn professing his love to me in the alcove of their living room, yet my eyes only saw a meadow in the heart of Rivendale. Story worlds have the magical ability of allowing the mind to remove itself from the mundane practices of everyday life and thrust us into what once seemed unimaginable. Any of us Fairytale and Fantasy aficionados know how well these tales burn into our hearts and provide us with countless hours of daydreaming material, but it is the potential of greatness that these stories open up for our often times limited waking life. Storybooks Made Real, a compilation of essays surrounding the inceptions and creation of story world landmarks, beautifully highlights the life breathed into some of our most beloved tales, through the world of amusement parks and tourist attractions. Throughout this collection, each scholar—or more appropriately each pilgrim—transports you to a realm of transformation. From the magical English gardens breathing life back into Beatrix Potter, to the grandiose world of Hogwarts, each essay represents powerful narratives of landscape transformation that finds itself in the midst of the tension between the sacred and profane, modern and old world, emphasizing a respect and delicate care for the natural landscapes and communities that engrain their culture in these story worlds. Each author relates their own experiences of these story worlds, acting as our guides and walking readers through a journey that transports us through time and space. One of the most successful aspects of this collection of essays is the emphasis that each author puts on the transformative aspect of these attractions. With many of these essays outlining the inception of these parks, the landscape is often "a rocky landscape" (West), "virtually inaccessible" (Jackson), or down an "unpaved two-rut road" (Rollin). These descriptions, just to name a few, seemingly create magical realms right before our eyes and mimic a desire many of us have in a post-pandemic world for [End Page 350] the mundane and dreary to become otherworldly and tantalizing. Focusing on these aspects of transformation successfully melds both old and new worlds together, unavoidably bringing joy and a sense of conflict drawn from the corruptions of a capitalistic focused society. Storybook worlds, as much as they are for our own nostalgia and connection to a natural world, serve as a money-making machine for industries that prey upon the scarcity of these literary spaces. This collection does well to address the issues that commodification and mass tourism has, not only on the transformation of the stories themselves, but the positive and negative effects that are brought to the communities around these storybook worlds. Each essay takes care to humanize the creation of these worlds, assuring readers that these places do in fact coexist with individuals whose lives forever changed by the stories that have frozen their communities in time, or pushed them into the world of corporate modernity. In looking at this tension, many authors of these essays also examine the question of whether or not these story worlds transform the original meaning and intention of the stories themselves. Authors like Patkin explore the "Disneyfication" of beloved stories, stories that privilege nature and a disconnect from the chaos that metropolitan industrialism brings, yet now find themselves stripped of their didactic properties in favor of easy to digest, emotionally pandering media. As Patkin states in "Winnie the Pooh: Resisting Commodification," "Disneyfication typically alters the original theme and characters of a story, distorts the narrative structure and changes the cultural and geographic setting" (59). This process of commercialization, outlined in many of these essays, prompts us to walk the...

«Только плохо с этой Гражданской войной»: репрезентация событий 1917–1918 гг. в детских нарративах

Introduction. Our understanding of the life of children during the Civil War is largely based on two sets of published documents: the essays of immigrant children, written abroad in 1924–1925, and personal documents of the children of the Petrograd nutritional colony, who made forced trip around the world in 1918–1921, about whom the book by O.I. Molkina. Therefore, any new sources in this area are very valuable. The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the images of childhood during the period of civil confrontation through the interpretation of the collection of “children’s letters” written in 1917–1918. Methods. The study is based on methodological developments in the study of “children’s” texts created by A.A. Salnikova. Based on the objectives of the study, the analysis of 54 selected narratives of children and adolescents (1917–1918) was carried out within the methodological framework of interpretive approach based on “understanding” reading of “children’s letters” through an unformalized analysis of their texts. Analysis. As a result of the analysis of the texts of letters of children and adolescents, the main thematic topics of correspondence were revealed, which made it possible to structure the texts of children’s letters. The identified thematizations were grouped into nine blocks: “war”, “revolution”, “deprivation”, “children”, “adults”, “life”, “protest”, “study”, “feelings / emotions”. The scope and objectives of the article allow to focus only on the first three blocks. Unlike the essays written by children in exile, many of the authors of the letters we studied belonged to a completely different social environment – the families of the Russian intelligentsia, who positively perceived the revolution, sympathizing with the Bolsheviks or being in their ranks. Results. Analysis of “children’s letters” 1917–1918 showed that there is no single children’s discourse about the Civil War. At least two diametrically opposite children’s discourses – “emigrant” and “revolutionary”, are quite clearly observed. The second discourse was presented in this work.

Global TALES feasibility study: Personal narratives in 10-year-old children around the world.

Personal narratives make up more than half of children's conversations. The ability to share personal narratives helps build and maintain friendships, promotes physical and emotional wellbeing, supports classroom participation, and underpins academic success and vocational outcomes. Although personal narratives are a universal discourse genre, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research into children's ability to share personal narratives is in its infancy. The current study addresses this gap in the research by developing the Global TALES protocol, a protocol comprising six scripted prompts for eliciting personal narratives in school-age children (excited, worried, annoyed, proud, problem situation, something important). We evaluated its feasibility with 249 ten-year-old children from 10 different countries, speaking 8 different languages, and analyzed researchers' views on the process of adapting the protocol for use in their own country/language. At group-level, the protocol elicited discourse samples from all children, although individual variability was evident, with most children providing responses to all six prompts. When investigating the topics of children's personal narratives in response to the prompts, we found that children from around the world share many commonalities regarding topics of conversation. Once again individual variability was high, indicating the protocol is effective in prompting children to share their past personal experiences without forcing them to focus on one particular topic. Feedback from the participating researchers on the use of the protocol in their own countries was generally positive, although several translation issues were noted. Based on our results, we now invite clinical researchers from around the world to join us in conducting further research into this important area of practice to obtain a better understanding of the development of personal narratives from children across different languages and cultures and to begin to establish local benchmarks of performance.

A Critical Analysis of David and Goliath in Picturebooks

The story of David and Goliath is a popular and often referenced narrative. This study examined how contemporary authors and illustrators depict this ancient narrative in children's picturebooks. Using selection criteria determined by the researchers, 26 picturebooks were compared with the English Standard Version (ESV) of the ancient text. Content analysis and a constant comparative coding process were employed which revealed many consistencies between the biblical passage and modern picturebooks. The analysis also revealed major modifications, omissions, and additions to the retelling of the ancient text. Suggestions for selecting picturebooks with faithful representation of the narrative are included.

What Predicts Oral Narrative Competence Among African American Children? Exploring the Role of Linguistic and Cognitive Skills.

Oral narrative, or storytelling, skills may constitute a linguistic strength for African American children, with implications for academic and social well-being. Despite this possibility, few studies have examined individual differences in oral narrative skill among African American children. To address this gap in the literature, this study examined how children's linguistic and cognitive skills predicted their competence in structuring oral stories, both on average and for children with different levels of narrative skill. Fictional oral narratives were elicited from a sample of 144 typically developing African American children, aged 4-8 years, using a wordless picture book as the stimulus. The effects of children's vocabulary, complex syntax, and nonverbal cognitive skills on macrostructural performance were assessed using linear regression to test average effects and simultaneous quantile regression to test effects across different levels of narrative skill. Children's competence in using complex syntax and nonverbal cognition, but not vocabulary, was predictive of narrative production, on average and as a function of narrative skill. Syntactic complexity appeared increasingly more relevant as children's narrative skill increased, whereas nonverbal cognition emerged as the most important for children at the lower to moderate ends of the narrative skill distribution. Both linguistic and cognitive skills help explain individual differences in African American children's macrostructural competence. Promoting children's development of complex syntax and nonverbal reasoning may provide potential mechanisms for supporting oral narrative skill development.

Age-Related Differences in the Expression of Causal Relationships During Narrative Production of Croatian Children

A successful narration relies on the ability of an individual to express a coherent sequence of temporally and causally related events organised around a specific theme, and this skill typically develops in early preschool age. Narrative coherence can be assessed by sequences or elements of story grammar. According to the causal network model, story grammar is viewed as an interconnected network of causal relationships, including enabling, physical, motivational, and psychological relationships. The importance of causal coherence has been recognised in many studies dealing with narrative discourse from the developmentalperspective. However, previous studies have reported inconsistent results with respect to the use of different types of causal relationships in the narratives of children of different ages. In the present study, we aimed to examine the differences between preschool and school children in their ability to express causal relationships, both overall and specific, in the narratives that they produce. Participants were monolingual Croatian-speaking children with typical language development, who were stratified into two groups: preschool (n = 41, mean age = 6;3 years) and school children (n = 50, mean age = 8;4 years). Narratives were collected using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), which was adapted to Croatian. The results show significant differences between the two groups of children in the overall proportion of causal relationships expressed, as well as specifically in the proportion of motivational relationships. There were no significant differences between the groups in production of enabling, physical, or psychological relationships. School children expressed more causal relationships overall than preschool children, as well as specifically more motivational relationships. As far as we know, this study is the first to investigate causality in the narratives of monolingual Croatian-speaking children using the causal network model. Our results only partially confirm the findings of previous studies, suggesting the need for further research to better understand the development of causal coherence in children’s narrative discourse.

Melodramatizing racialized Korea: the impasse of Black representation in Itaewon Class

ABSTRACT This article examines how Itaewon Class (Itaewon Keullasseu, JTBC, 2020) employs melodrama as a mode to recognize racial injury in the form of cathartic pathos on the character of Toni. This representational strategy renders Toni’s Blackness less legible to construct the series as quality, diverse, and progressive while failing to tackle the cultural specificity of the Black Korean experience. Despite the growing visibility of Black entertainers and the use of Blackface in Korean popular culture, which have been the subject of controversy and scrutiny, there is a dearth of scholarship that analyses the representation of Blackness in contemporary Korean media. Drawing on industrial and textual analysis, this article explores how the illegibility of Toni’s Blackness is used to obfuscate dominant representations of Blacks in the past with ties to U.S. military occupation. The cultural specificity and legibility of Blackness as a signifier of racial difference is disguised under the exploited melodramatic narrative of mixed-race children’s search for their biological father. The article also argues that Itaewon Class aims to obscure antiblackness embedded firmly in Korea’s racialized past involving Black Korean children, while calling forth racial incidents and Black victimization to envision a new modern Korea.

Comparative Analysis of the Mind Style: Child Narrators in Mark Haddon’s &lt;em&gt;The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time&lt;/em&gt; and Ismail Kadare’s &lt;em&gt;Chronicle in Stone&lt;/em&gt;

This study compares the stylistic markers of the thinking style of the child narrators in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) by British writer Mark Haddon and Chronicle in Stone (1971) by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. The paper analyzes the language of the narrators to identify the foregrounded linguistic elements in the narrative and consequently their reliability and impact on the reader. The linguistic features that characterize the child narrators of these novels are considered as features of their thinking style that indicate the limitations of their age and create the effect of unreliability. The analysis of the narrators’ stylistic features points to the foregrounded patterns that differ slightly in both narrators and are demonstrated at different linguistic levels such as lexical choices, coordinated syntactic patterns, juxtapositions of literal and figurative meanings, and the inclusion of other elements that mark the distinction of their idiosyncrasies and social background. By reflecting the child’s genuine naiveté, the narrative device of unreliability evokes empathy and enhances the reader’s interpretive power.