Theme: The Children’s Library Saga and the Swedish Teachers’ Magazine’s Publishing House. Logo: The Swedish Institute for Children's Books “But I do write just for children”: Hugo Gyllander’s Letters About His Translations of the Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm and Asbjørnsen & Moe Through his great productivity and deep involve­ment with the Barnbiblioteket Saga series, published by Svensk läraretidnings förlag, Hugo Gyllander (1868–1955) was a front figure in Swedish children’s literature during the first half of the 20th century. He translated many of the great international classics, but today he is perhaps best known for his translations of the fairy tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and others. In this context it is interesting to examine Gyllander’s views of his own practice in his correspondence with his two editors, Amanda Hammarlund and Signe Wranér. The article focuses first on letters to Hammarlund regarding his first volume of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. My second example is from his correspondence with Wranér and concerns his translations of Asbjørnsen and Moe’s fairy tales. The aim is to show in what ways his expressed translation ideals are affected by his view of the status of the source material and by the nature of his relationship to the two editors. The analysis reveals that while Gyllander expresses an ambition to stay as close to the original as possible in the case of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, he shows a greater readiness to adapt the fairy tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe.

Review/Recension

Theme: The Children’s Library Saga and the Swedish Teachers’ Magazine’s Publishing House. Logo: The Swedish Institute for Children's Books Feeling Like a Reader: Independent Readers and Easy Readers in Barnbiblioteket Saga during the 1940s In 1935, Signe Wranér succeeded Amanda Hammarlund as editor of the book series Barnbiblioteket Saga at Svensk läraretidnings förlag, initiating a shift in the publication profile. Following Annette Wannamaker and Jennifer Miskec, this article explores the development of “Independent Readers” and “Easy Readers” in the series during the 1940s. Our conclusions are that the publishing house focused on two key approaches: linguistic adaptation, exemplified by Ingrid Wallerström, and psychological alignment, as seen in works by Kaj Juel Nielsen and Bodil Farup. These books featured simplified language, larger text, and thematic affiliation with contemporary views on child psychology and pedagogy – empowering the reader on a formal as well as a thematic level. The study also shows that this part of the book series was aimed at both the youngest schoolchildren and pupils in special education, blurring the lines between Independent Readers and Easy Readers. By analyzing books, correspondence, and manuscripts, the study contextualizes these publications within historical debates on education and children's literature, offering new insights into the history of Swedish children’s literature.

Review/Recension

Theme: Multilingualism and Children's Literature. Ill. Henry Lyman Saÿen - Child Reading (1915–1918). Smithsonian American Art Museum, object number 1968.19.11. Introduktion: Flerspråkighet och barnlitteratur – nya perspektiv

This article explores the resurgence of contemporary Sephardic children’s literature, with a particular focus on its multilingual nature as a central feature. The study aims to demonstrate how the use of multiple languages within a book serves as a tool to keep young Sephardic readers connected to Ladino – their heritage language – which, nowadays, is considered severely endangered. The methodological approach is based on Jeffrey Shandler’s concept of post-vernacularity, positioning contemporary Judeo-Spanish children’s literature as a post-vernacular phenomenon. The selected books were published in Israel and the United States between 2010 and 2023. This research categorises these works based on the various configurations of multilingualism, which may manifest as direct translations or the use of different languages (and alphabets) in distinct sections of the text and in the pictures. The study concludes that multilingual children’s literature offers a meaningful way for young Sephardim to connect with their cultural roots and engage with Ladino culture.

One in five children in Norwegian kindergartens are multilingual, and reading practices that encourage the use of multilinguals’ entire linguistic repertoire can serve as important opportunities for language sharing, which is also encouraged by the Norwegian education authorities. In this study, we initially aimed to explore kindergarten reading practices involving languages other than Norwegian. When it became clear that such practices are rare, we expanded our investigation to include early childhood teachers’ experiences of reading with multilingual children more broadly. Our data sources consist of both self-reported data from a nationwide survey on reading practices in Norwegian kindergartens and six semi-structured focus group interviews with kindergarten staff. As reading in Norwegian kindergartens appears to occur in a space between kindergarten children’s right to meaningful experiences in different languages and their need to learn Norwegian, we shed light on what early childhood teachers highlight as central resources for reading with multilinguals. The key resources that emerge in the analyses encompass different forms of expression, hence multimodality is used as the overarching theoretical perspective in the study. Additionally, we discuss how good opportunities for promoting diverse reading practices become evident when kindergarten staff demonstrate curiosity, creativity, and a problem-solving approach to reading with multilinguals.

”It Seems to Be a Complicated Question”: Humor as Strategy in Scandinavian Facts-of-Life-Books 
 The aim of this article is to examine how a selection of Scandinavian children’s books, spanning from the 1970s up until today, have addressed questions concerning where children come from. Previous research has shown that various forms of humor have been used in the dissemination of information on intercourse and conception. In our article, we examine how and why humor is used when presenting adult sexuality in books for children. We consider humor to be a strategy to take the edge off a challenging topic. However, this strategy does not come without a cost. With the help of critical theory and humor theory, we problematize the strategic use of humor, as it may contribute to the reproduction of heteronormative notions and patterns. In the article, we map several recurring tactics, which we have categorized into five humoristic expressions: transgression of taboos, humorous recognition, absurd humor, naivistic humor, and anthropomorphic humor.

Jöns Mellgren’s Sigrid och natten (Sigrid and the Night, 2013), is a tale of grief and post-traumatic stress, but also – and more importantly – a tale of care and healing. The article’s aim is to show how the book offers narrative-visual access to social emotions (such as love and grief) and mental states (such as depression), which are usually not yet accessible to a young audience through their own experience. These social emotions and mental states are made tangible in different ways through the multimediality and materiality of the picturebook, and by the particular dialogical reading situation that the picturebook warrants. Picturebooks are consequently understood as part of visual literacy training and, explicitly in this context, of the acquiring of “emotional literacy” (Nikolajeva, “Emotions in Picturebooks” 114). The article argues that Sigrid och natten provides a training ground for visual and, in particular, emotional literacy. Three leitmotifs are examined in Sigrid och natten, namely lighthouses, colors, and hands, and one particular question is used as an analytical tool: “what are you going through?” (Ruddick, “Maternal Thinking” 596). The theme of mothering is connected to the hand and the lighthouse in particular. Regarded in a larger context of practices of care, a form of mothering takes place, for instance, in the reading situation (the reading aloud) of the book by caretakers/readers. The concept of visual literacy is influenced by Walter Benjamin’s theory on picturebooks, while cognitive criticism, reader-response theory, and a material and visual studies approach provide the theoretical framework for the reading of Mellgren’s picturebook.

Aesthetics in Practice: About the Relationship Between Aesthetics and Pedagogy When Reading Lisen Adbåge’s Samtidigt som 
 The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between aesthetics and pedagogy by focusing on a picturebook’s aesthetic design and students’ understanding of time as abstraction. The survey uses Lisen Adbåge’s picturebook Samtidigt som (At the Same Time As, 2017), which was read and discussed in three Swedish preschool classes. In the study, the book’s artistic forms of expression are linked to students’ statements about what ”at the same time as” means. The research questions are: a) How does time appear as a phenomenon through the book’s artistic forms of expression? b) What do the children focus on in doublespreads that arouse their interest when they reason about what ”at the same time” means? and c) Is it possible to discern what specifically triggers thoughts about time through the aesthetic design of the book? To answer the research questions, theory for picturebook analysis (Laukka) and play research (Pramling et al.) is used, as well as conversation analysis (Sidnell and Stivers). Through the children’s comments when reading the book aloud to them, it turns out that seven of the 13 doublespreads in the book attract the children’s interest more than the others, and these are the doublespreads that contain an interplay between what happens (”as is”) and may happen (”as if”). Play research’s use of ”as is” and ”as if” is therefore proposed as a starting point for understanding children’s interpretation of a picturebook, that is, as thought play. Also, this implies that aesthetic means are important for developing an understanding of abstractions such as time.