“As if it never happened”: Fictional Work with Forgiveness as a Value amongst 5th–7th Graders
 This article examines how middle school pupils respond to an aesthetic approach to forgiveness as a value. We observed a group of pupils aged 10–12 while they were investigating and discussing Stian Hole’s picturebook Garmanns gate (Garmann’s Street, 2008) together with their teacher. We claim that Garmanns gate can be read as a story about forgiveness, and that it is also a picturebook that invites the reader to take a performative, aesthetic position; the reader is encouraged to pay attention to how the story is told as well as to the story itself (Ørjasæter, “Terskelposisjonen”). The focus of the article is to what extent investigating Garmanns gate will shed light on forgiveness, a value which is central in the Norwegian school’s purpose clause. We analysed their comments in the light of a definition that identifies different aspects of the concept of forgiveness. Our theoretical framework is Martha Nussbaum’s theory on the importance of narrative imagination in taking other peoples’ perspectives, and Louise Rosenblatt’s theory on aesthetic and efferent reading. We also refer to Maria Nikolajeva’s views on how the picturebook can promote emotional literacy. To deal with the concept of forgiveness, we use Paul Leer-Salvesen’s definition, which enables us to look at different aspects of the concept. These aspects together with “the emancipating consequences of forgiveness” are the categories we use in analysing our findings (Leer-Salvesen, Min skyld 96). We find that an aesthetic approach to Garmanns gate may provide an opportunity for a broader understanding of forgiveness, and we find that the teacher’s role is essential in guiding the pupils in the common aesthetic approach to the book, and in bringing forth reflections in the conversations.

The aim of this article is to explore the queer possibilities of the silence in the depiction of the protagonist’s love life in Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s Tony trilogy (1922–1926). The silence in the trilogy is manifested through absence: the theme of “ingenting” (nothing), the protagonist not speaking or acting, and the aesthetic that is created by interruptions in the protagonist’s dialogue, inner monologue, and narration. The analysis focuses on three passages: a depiction of an encounter between Tony and one of her suitors, her relative Frank Maclean, in Tonys läroår (Tony’s Apprenticeship, 1924); the ending of the trilogy in Tonys sista läroår (Tony’s Last Apprenticeship, 1926); and an epilogue to the trilogy, which was never included in it but later published in the second, expanded edition of En dagdriverskas anteckningar (The Notes of a Flâneuse, 1934). They are contextualised with references to the trilogy as a whole and compared to Krusenstjerna’s previous novels Ninas dagbok (The Diary of Nina, 1917) and Helenas första kärlek (Helena’s First Love, 1918). The method is a close reading with instead of against the grain, focusing on queer aspects of depictions of heterosexuality. It draws on theory belonging to the anti-social turn of queer studies and queer temporality studies. My conclusion is that Tony not speaking or acting can be read as anti-social feminism, with Tony as an anti-social feminist subject. Her queer life schedule can be interpreted as unbecoming woman. The “nothing,” and implicitly the creativity, that her passivity leads to accomplishes the opposite of patriarchal and chrononormative structures. The narrative and its ending are queer in the sense that they refuse to cohere and to fulfil demands for a happy, emancipatory ending.

This article examines the relationship between aesthetics and pedagogy in two recent historical novels for children about the British Home Front during the Second World War: Letters from the Lighthouse (2017) by Emma Carroll and Our Castle by the Sea (2019) by Lucy Strange. It argues that the representation of civilian life during the war in both novels is conditioned by recent socio-political events in Britain, namely, the recurrent appropriation of the wartime past in support of nationalist and anti-immigration rhetoric. The texts discussed in this article seek to counter this narrative, foregrounding immigration as a vital part of Britain’s wartime past. Drawing upon historical fiction studies and cultural analysis, the article begins with an exploration of the aesthetic treatment of wartime Britain in the texts more broadly, arguing that Letters from the Lighthouse participates in and subverts idealised visions of the Home Front, while Our Castle by the Sea rejects nostalgia entirely. I conclude my discussion with an examination of the use of the wartime spy story as an aesthetic template for exploring concepts of xenophobia and prejudice in the two novels. Ultimately, this article contends that literary aesthetics perform a pedagogic function in both texts, presenting the contribution of immigrants and refugees as crucial to the story of the Britain Home Front.

Augmented reality (AR) picturebooks combine printed children's literature with augmented reality. This study examines the shared reading of the Finnish AR picturebook Mur, eli karhu (2016) by Kaisa Happonen and Anne Vasko. The main aim of the study is to explore the playful reading experience of three Finnish families with children between the ages of 4 and 6. Three main categories of engagement with the book are discussed in the article: interpretation, negotiation, and play. The findings of the study suggest that children are skilled users of mobile digital media but may not understand the content of AR without parental mediation. In addition, parents and educators are required to have substantial pedagogical and aesthetic knowledge to successfully support children’s engagement with hybrid and multimodal literary works. This knowledge involves understanding both children’s literature and the digital medium.

Review/Recension

Reader Engagement, Interpretation, and Identification: Children’s Letters to the Christmas Annual Jultomten
 The article examines a selection of children’s letters sent to the editor of the Swedish annual Christmas publication Jultomten (Father Christmas) during three years at the turn of the century 1900. The aim is to show how children responded to the editor’s invitation to write letters to the journal, how the children commented on some of the images, and how their appreciation and involvement were articulated in terms of reader engagement, interpretation, and identification. For this purpose, the letters were analyzed with the help of visual literacy theories and methods, which focus on primary school children’s picture (and picturebook) reception. The results show that the children’s response to the chosen images varies according to their level of involvement and degree of visual literacy competence.

The Boys’ Nation According to Ulf Stark: A Literary Excursion in Stureby
 A great part of Ulf Stark’s literary œuvre takes place in Stureby, a suburb south of Stockholm, and more specifically Stureby in the 1950s, the place and era of the author’s own boyhood. Although the environment we enter via Stark’s authorship is to be regarded as his imaginary universe, an investigation such as this shows that there are several links and correspondences between the literary setting and the real suburb. In order to investigate some of these connections, this study invokes two theoretical fields. The first one is literary geography, more precisely Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad, concerning three both different and interacting ways of understanding a room: the perceived, the conceptualized, and the social. Furthermore this survey takes into account different historical documents concerning Stureby, and also a form of literary excursion, a pondering walking tour around Stureby of today, with Stark’s narrative in mind. The second theoretical field is boyhood studies and in particular the idea of a boys’ own “nation”, a distinct cultural world with its own rituals and own symbols and values: a social space where the boys play outside the rules of the adult world. The book chosen for this investigation is Stark’s Min vän Percys magiska gymnastikskor (My Friend Percy’s Magical Gym Shoes, 1991). The study shows that specific places in Stureby, such as the suburban road, the tunnel, the kiosk, and the subway bridge are invaded and appropriated by the boys, and turned into arenas of different boy culture rituals and adventures. This, in turn, means that the geographical places described in Stark’s work influence the style of the work – for example its narrative action, its vocabulary, the narrative devices, and the compositional form.

Introduction: Silence and Silencing in Children’s Literature

What’s a Rebel Girl in Swedish? On the Translation of Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls
 Abstract: This article investigates the translation of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women, a children’s book written and published by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo in 2016. Within the framework of Gideon Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies and Katharina Reiss’ text typology, the study focuses on the Swedish translation Godnattsagor för rebelltjejer: 100 berättelser om fantastiska kvinnor from 2017, including comparisons with the Danish, French, and Norwegian translations, with a view to discover the differences between the text versions. Analysis shows that the Swedish translation is less source-text dependent than the other translations, downplaying the fairytalization of the stories and tending to strengthen the informative component of the text. Poetic language and metaphors are less apparent in the Swedish translation, while hedging, explicitation as well as specification of time, place and chronology contribute to making the text more factual. A further finding is that more adult language is used in the Swedish translation. The article ends by summarizing the main findings and discussing a few explanations for the adaptation of the Swedish translation with regard to its target language context.

Introduktion: ”Poesi för barn och unga”