Licentiatavhandling Växjö : Växjö universitet, 2007.

This literary study is an analysis of fat child characters in British juvenile fiction, 1960 to 2010. The argument is that juvenile fiction, with growing frequency, has advanced lay psychological explanations for departures from a culturally sanctioned slender ideal. Detailing the socio-historical basis for changing literary constructions of the fat child comprises an original contribution to knowledge. Protagonists and peripheral characters from eighty-five examples of juvenile fiction are critiqued. At the start of the period, the majority of texts associate fatness with moral failings. By the middle of the period, fatness is predominantly associated with poor emotional health. This association persists until the period’s close, becoming entwined in the final decade with the increasing use of references to body fat as a means of demarcating the child’s position within commodity and celebrity cultures. No text foregrounds associations between fatness and physical health problems. Transitions from one dominant construction of fatness to another are accompanied by changes in how fat characters are gendered, classed and racialised. Issues of Jackie magazine (1964-1994) and contemporaneous psychological abstracts are examined as contextual material. The study concludes that discontinuities in constructions of the fat child express historically specific fears of social, economic, or political transformation in Britain. How child readers might comply with or rework literary constructions of the fat child is suggested as a topic for further research.

This thesis explores the representation of the contemporary secular angel in children’s literature, focusing on the works of three authors: David Almond, Philip Pullman, and Cliff McNish. In the works in question, the secular angel has been removed from all religious frameworks, including its traditional allegiance and obedience to a God or Devil figure. This absence, however, does not negate the existence of a moral compass, nor the importance of free will, which is bestowed upon and used by angelic and human characters alike. Transformation, one of the thesis’s key themes, becomes significant as I argue that the angelic figures bring about a transformation in the novels’ protagonists. Intertextuality forms an integral part of the analysis as the works of John Milton and William Blake are key reference points. The Introduction traces the angel’s trajectory from its scriptural tradition in the Middle Ages, to its progressive secularisation in the 20th century, and a chapter on each author follows. The thesis concludes by arguing that these angels’ role in children’s literature is to challenge and complicate notions of religion, innocence and experience, and science vs. faith, as they become representatives of a contemporary, secular philosophy, while retaining and embracing the spiritual.

British Children’s Literature has a long and distinguished history. In fact it could be argued that in the late seventeenth and increasingly in the eighteenth century, Britain took the lead in developing a new kind of literature especially designed for children. The Puritans were the first to recognise the potential for material specifically targeted at children as a means of reforming the personal piety of all individuals, including children. As a result, educational, instructional and religious books for children began to appear followed later by books retelling myths, legends and oral tales and later again books intended to entertain and engage children at all stages of their development. Included as part of British Children’s Literature was the work of Scottish authors. Indeed writers such as Sir Walter Scott, George MacDonald and J.M Barrie produced works that have since become Children’s Literature classics and they themselves had significant influence on diverse children’s authors including writers such as Lewis Carroll and C.S.Lewis. Though the work of Scottish authors was included in British Children’s Literature, it was not recognised specifically for its distinctively Scottish elements. In fact, increasingly from the nineteenth century, it began to be labelled as ‘English’ Children’s Literature even though it meant ‘British’. Scotland had been a separate nation until the Act of Union in 1707. After that, even as a ‘stateless nation’, Scotland retained its own education system, its own legal system and its own national church. Scottish Literature continued to flourish during this period making use of English and Scots language, as well as Gaelic, to produce an illustrious and influential literature of world renown. As Roderick Watson has observed, “the main ‘state’ left to a ‘stateless nation’ may well be its state of mind, and in that territory it is literature that maps the land.” (Watson, 1995: xxxi) Since devolution in 1997, Scotland’s literature sector has undergone an unprecedented period of rapid, sustained and dramatic expansion, a process paralleled by the growing profile of Scottish writers internationally. During the same period Scottish Children’s Literature and Scottish children’s writers have not received the same attention, though their progress has been just as significant. In the year 2000 the Modern Language Association of America recognised Scottish Literature as a national literature, and presumably Scottish Children’s Literature is included as part of that, but it was not specifically highlighted. Even up until 2006, Scottish Children’s Literature was not generally included or even mentioned in Scottish Literature anthologies or histories of Scottish Literature. When in January 2006 the Scottish Executive unveiled Scotland’s Culture, its new cultural policy, it gave Scottish Literature a prominent place. At the same time this document also acknowledged the importance of education in giving access to and highlighting Scotland’s literary heritage. It became all the more important then to recognise the existence of a corpus of work that is recognisable as Scottish Children’s Literature existing separately from but complementary to English Children’s literature and which could be used in schools by teachers and read by children in order to explore and interrogate their own cultural history and identity. This thesis seeks to investigate whether a distinctive Scottish Children’s Literature exists and, if so, to identify those aspects that make it distinctive. Further, if Scottish Children’s Literature exists, how does it become a repository for the formation of culture, identity and nationhood and how does this impact on young Scottish readers? In order to carry out this investigation the study adopts an integrated, humanistic and multi-dimensional approach towards Scottish Children’s fiction. It draws selectively and discursively on theories of reading, reader response and close reading skills for heuristic purposes; that is, on methods that further the overall hermeneutical task of enlarging understanding of the phenomenon, though no particular theoretical approach to analysis has been privileged over another. It draws on a range of overarching theoretical perspectives that work effectively in illuminating the characteristics of particular texts with and for readers. As such, the study does not pretend to provide a specific theoretical basis for the reading of Scottish Children’s Fiction. The approach adopted requires an immersion in the narratives, making unfamiliar texts familiar in order to do the work of projecting a distinctive Scottish perspective. Given that this study is among the first of its kind, it provides a base-line for others to apply specific theoretical filters to Scottish Children’s Literature for further study. Using what cultural typology and the semiotics of culture would recognise as a retrospective approach, this study intends to identify children’s texts that are recognisably Scottish and which may be considered to form a corpus of work which can be celebrated as a central part of Scottish Children’s Literature. WATSON, R. (1995) The Poetry of Scotland, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

Digital children’s literature is a relatively recently established field of research that has been seeking for its theoretical base and defining its position and scope. Its major attention so far has been on the narrative app, a new form of children’s literature displayed on a touchscreen computational device. The narrative app came into being around 2010, and immediately attracted the attention of the academics. So far, various studies have been conducted to explore its educational potential, but very few have investigated the app for what it is in its own right. To bridge the gap, this study has explored the nature of the narrative app and the essential principles of its narrative strategies. As the subject of this study concerns a variety of disciplines, this research has been conducted in an extremely interdisciplinary way in order to develop a thorough understanding of the narrative app. In general, it has consulted scholarship in children’s literature (picturebook studies in particular), narratology, computer science, game studies, social semiotics, film studies, media studies, communication studies, electronic literature and game design. With this interdisciplinary approach, this study has attempted to define the subject of the study, identify some tendencies in its development, and most importantly, develop an original theory of storytelling and a narrative map that may be able to explain the intrinsic methods used in the narrative app storytelling as well as other digital and non-digital storytelling. The findings of this study seem to suggest that the narrative app does not display any essential differences from the codex and other forms of literature in terms of its narrative strategies, but it appears to have great potential to truly innovate storytelling. It is suggested that this study may provide an effective theoretical scope and methodology for the study of the field of digital children’s literature, which may offer the potential to strengthen this field of research. The theoretical framework constructed by this study may be applicable to some educational approaches to the narrative app, and may also be useful for teaching new literacies.

This thesis comprises critical reflection and novel. Claims for originality in the novel lie in the combination of the specific geographical location of Leeds, the 1970s setting, the narrative time frame of twenty‐four hours, and the use of the mundane not as a setting from which to escape but as one in which epiphanous moments can be found. These key decisions were made early in the evolution of the novel and are discussed, along with other issues such teenage sexuality, in the first section of the critical reflection. The novel’s main character, fourteen‐year‐old Daniel, is grieving over the loss of his mother, and bereavement becomes the focus of the second section, which comprises the main thrust of the reflection. In response to similar research undertaken in 1985, I take forty‐nine novels for ten to fourteen‐year‐olds written between 1997 and 2010 and analyse the presentation of bereavement therein, providing original data and opening up the novels to a scrutiny to which many have never been subjected. The previous research concludes that children’s novels offered little of value for bereaved children. I question whether writers for children have a duty to do anything but entertain by engaging with critical opinion past and present, and argue that it is impossible for a writer to avoid awareness of the age of the reader, that novels can affect children, and that consequently the writer must show moral and artistic responsibility in the presentation of important themes. My research suggests that gender differences are still present but are less emphatic, and that some novels present bereavement in a sanitised, irresponsible way or fail to present it at all. I also find the resolution of grief through the use of ghosts or visions neither realistic nor helpful. In the final chapter I explore ways in which the reading impacted positively upon the writing of Day and conclude that not only do the best of the novels treat bereavement with wit, insight and sensitivity, but that the eclectic mix of theme, character, voice and style across the books will provide inspiration for future projects for years to come.

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