Reviews - Hans Sande

Barnboken

Introduction: Diversity in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature

The Bridge, 2019

Written Communication, 2002

Major Western language communities often establish their own official, self-contained centers of research within a field, in connection to which minor language communities are obliged to play more marginal roles on the periphery. This does not result in the latter communities simply importing, following, and copying the dominant trends and internationally acclaimed studies of the official centers, especially at local and national levels. Historical and contemporary impulses of different kinds will always color any import and implementation across borders and resist the direct cloning of ideas. The asymmetric relation does, however, foster important differences in attitudes and orientations. Although it is of vital importance for researchers from small language communities to stay well informed about what is going on abroad, more centrally positioned researchers may not feel the same urge to seek information about the periphery. Of course, language barriers also mean that access to such information is limited as long as it is not published internationally. Norwegian research on writing offers a vantage point for such reflections on center and periphery and the relations between them. This research is carried out in a small country on the outskirts of Europe, with few inhabitants, a national language that is not commonly spoken or understood outside Scandinavia, a rather homogeneous and monolingual culture, and a small number of universities and colleges. Norwegian writing research is small scaled and modest 452

This article takes as its subject the project of British author and editor Aidan Chambers to set up a small press dedicated to publishing modern European children's literature in translation, 1988-92. Positioned within Gideon Toury's framework of Descriptive Translation Studies, this paper outlines the history of the firm and its founding ideology to publish children's literature "with a difference" for a British audience. As a result, preliminary norms (relating to text, author and translator selection) and operational norms (relating to translation strategies) for four novels by Maud Reuterswärd, Peter Pohl and Tormod Haugen are identified and analyzed. Fundamental to the article's methodology is the use of bibliographical, archival and oral history primary sources. The principal focus of research interest is Chambers' use of language consultants in addition to his commissioned translators in an unusual and sometimes challenging professional collaboration of editortranslator-consultant within a Nordic-British setting.

This thesis uses a multidisciplinary approach drawing primarily on archival and bibliographical research as well as the fields of children's literature, book history and translation to explore British translation of Nordic children's fiction since 1950. Which works of Nordic children's literature have been published in the UK during the period in question? And how were Nordic children's authors and texts selected by British publishers, along with British translators and illustrators?

Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education, 2017

This essay is part of a research work aiming to rediscover and enhance the contribution of Leila Berg, English author and editor who died at the age of 94 in 2012: a fully-fledged player in the profound transformation of children's literature in Europe during the Sixties and Seventies, she was renowned for her works on the close ties between pedagogical thought and writing, taking part in the debate on the limits of traditional education and literary choices. The innovative depth of Leila Berg's most famous literary project, the Nippers series for early readers, which began in 1967, may be fully understood from the essays the writer dedicated to the problems of education and language learning: in these, children's literature, with its reworked topics and stylistic choices, is given a central role for the empowerment of working class children, often deprived of motivating reading experiences both in the family and school contexts. Il saggio si inscrive in un lavoro di ricerca che intende riscoprire e valorizzare il contributo di Leila Berg, scrittrice ed editor anglosassone scomparsa a 94 anni nel 2012: pienamente inserita nel contesto di profonda trasformazione della letturatura per l'infanzia in Europa negli anni Sessanta e Settanta, il suo impegno si caratterizza per la stretta relazione tra riflessione pedagogica e scrittura, adesione al dibattito sui limiti dell'educazione tradizionale e scelte letterarie. La portata innovativa del progetto editoriale più noto di Leila Berg, la serie dei Nippers per primi lettori, avviato nel 1967, può essere pienamente compresa attraverso i saggi che la scrittrice dedica ai problemi dell'educazione e dell'apprendimento linguistico: in essi è assegnato alla letteratura per l'infanzia, ripensata nei temi e nelle scelte stilistiche, un ruolo centrale per l'empowerment dei bambini della working class, spesso deprivati di esperienze di lettura motivanti sia nel contesto familiare che in quello scolastico.

Writing and Pedagogy

Recent decades have seen a shift regarding ideas of and approaches to literacy. One example is that the individual-psychological perspective focusing primarily on specific writing skills that used to be predominant has been extended and complemented by functional, social semiotic, and sociocultural perspectives where the interaction between the individual's use of language resources and the social, cultural, and historical contexts is in focus (e.g., Beach et al., 2016). Furthermore, issues of writing instruction and research have, in recent years, received far more attention than before, which can be noted by the publication of handbooks of writing research (MacArthur et al., 2016), writing development (Beard et al., 2009), writing instruction (Graham et al., 2019), and reviews of writing research (Juzwik et al., 2006). This increased attention to writing also applies in the three neighbouring countries that constitute Scandinavia: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (see Bremholm et al., 2022). Two decades ago, Igland and Ongstad (2002, pp. 339-340), in a special issue of Written Communication, presented Norwegian writing research and noted that international readers may find 'the relationship between theoretical and empirical aspects in [the included] articles unfamiliar and provocative'. They suspected this because of the

2020

This is a position paper by the guest editors of the Barnboken theme “Diversity in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature” in which we propose that theorising and promoting diversity in the Nordic context would benefit from a broadening of the approaches that dominate the British and American contexts. We attempt to tone down the confrontational style of discussion by outlining the value of two non-political approaches to diversity: cognitive and imagological studies. The former highlights the neurological basis underpinning the desire to compare and the reliance on visual information in producing categories; the latter maps the ways in which images of nations are circulated. We then show how these approaches can dovetail with more politically motivated approaches – such as intersectionality – to produce a pedagogy of diversity. We do not claim that these are the only possible routes, and invite other scholars to diversify further. Our argument is that pitching the need for di...

Education Inquiry, 2018

Since the reform of Upper Secondary School in 2005 in Denmark, genre writing has been mandatory in the L1 subject. In the predefined genres, argumentative reasoning, textual analysis and disciplinary knowledge are given high priority, whereas creative or narrative reasoning and writing are not part of the curriculum. In this article, the writer development of a student participant will be investigated, focusing on how narrative nonetheless becomes present in his assignments and how he negotiates the predefined genres he is supposed to write in the L1 subject. The main focus of this study is to explore how on the one hand narrative is a resource for writer development and disciplinary knowledge and on the other hand becomes part of the student's writer identity and identification with an exploratory student position. The empirical data consists of interviews and assignments, collected through the student's 3 years of upper secondary education. In conclusion, it is argued that narratives should be part of the L1 curriculum, as narratives have the potential to provide more holistic writer development and to contribute to disciplinary knowledge.

2001

These four stories depict a series of Danish authors: HC Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Karen Blixen, and Suzanne Brøgger. Each story centers around a situation in or around Copenhagen seen from the point of view of the author I am analyzing. The stories replicate a personal filter each author might have used–how each would have interpreted events to fit his or her beliefs–while also letting the reader see the situation objectively.