Academic literature on the topic 'Albo illustrato.Children's Literature'

The influence of electronic and digital codes on children's literature represents one of the most interesting aspects of the artistic and literary productions of the last decades. Signs of the profound and irrevocable change that has taken place in children’s literature and in the ecosystem to be read of the electronic age are particular picturebooks, which reflect how even the printed book has drawn from the multilinear structures of the digital and from the expressive codes of the screens. In the context of this cultural mutation, the present contribution explores two illustrated books representative of the media technology mutation and integration, which, on the one hand, maintain the stability of reading on a traditional printed book, on the other, they contain the challenges of a "hyper-reading" experience.

The essay focuses on the examination of a selection of children’s picture books on the theme of clothing as an element of identity and as a means of personal and social transformation. The gender stereotype has always deprived children of the freedom to imagine themselves different from the imposed social model. Modern quality literature aims to free childhood from these constraints through stories that encourage the free expression of one's personality. "Clothing and childhood" is one of the binomial in which these themes appear most evident. While developing different plots, each selected book tells a story enriched by several levels of reading, more or less evident, and this is also due to particularly accurate illustrations, capable of adding further nuances to the text. Furthermore, even if characterized by the symbolic presence of clothes, these picture books do not make them the narrative fulcrum. In each of these case studies, clothing becomes a pretext for a journey of self-discovery and affirmation of one's individuality in the world. These case studies are a concrete example of the potential of the picture book as a vehicle of complex concepts and stratifications of complementary or parallel meanings that emerge from the dynamic relationship of the text with the image. Each double page opens multiple, free interpretative paths that can be taken at each reading, as the eye catches new aspects and the thought opens up to new discoveries. The imaginary dress is therefore one of the many parallel topics that it was possible to address through these books, with which the possible interpretations of clothing in children's literature have been explored, highlighting above all how much garments are objects charged with metasignification or with projections of a identity in formation such as the one of children.

This contribution aims to investigate the complex, transformative role children's literature can play in today’s socio-cultural context, offering a creative platform, not only in terms of plot or contexts, but also in terms of stylistic research and the book as a medium, on which to build new ways of thinking about and designing reality. The work focuses specifically on one of the most significant picture books on the topic of (real or metaphoric) migration, refugees, migrants’ difficult and controversial path to integration. The very rich production in recent years has, with different registers each time, emblematically interpreted the political vocation of contemporary children's literature, formulating relations with otherness, encouraging the deconstruction of cultural stereotypes and preventing emotional anaesthesia in the face of issues that demand the precise assumption of human and civil responsibility. In formal terms, it investigates the narrative strategies adopted by the authors and illustrators to guide the empathic involvement of the reader, aiming to foster reflexive and pro-social attitudes. In the picture books examined, the representation of the refugee, the stateless, the “destined to death”, to quote Hanna Arendt, for whom the loss of citizenship equals the denial of the most basic human rights, challenges the “danger of a single history”.

OPSOMMING In hierdie artikel ondersoek ons Alba Bouwer se Afrikaanse vertaling van die Duitse etiketboek Charmante Freundin: Sybille (1959), waarin die outeur nie vermeld word nie, as Sybille: Sjarmante vriendin (1968). Die Afrikaanse vertaling van Sybille word nêrens vermeld in die Afrikaanse naslaanliteratuur nie en daar bestaan 'n lakune in die ontleding van die Afrikaanse etiketboekgenre. Hierdie artikel trag om 'n gesprek aan te voor oor hierdie geïgnoreerde genre en hierdie vergete teks. Internasionale teoretici van etiketboeke beklemtoon die genre se gemoeidheid met voorskriftelike gedrag vir vroue en daarom vertolk ons Sybille as 'n handleiding vir hegemoniese gender-performance. Ons gebruik Judith Butler se teorieë van genderperformatiwiteit en gender-performance om die advies wat Sybille aanbied vir haar vroulike teikenlesers te ontleed, en redeneer dan dat die spreker se voorgeskrewe vroulike ideaal ooreenstem met normatiewe hegemoniese verwagtings van vroue. Deur die lens van die deskriptiewe vertaalteorie kaats ons die teks teen die agtergrond van Afrikanernasionalistiese genderkonstruksies van die 1960's en 1970's soos geuiter deur Bouwer en ander invloedryke politieke figure. Ons identifiseer dan 'n interne teenstrydigheid in beide Bouwer en Sybille se retoriek en advies aangaande aanvaarbare vroulike gedrag en bevind dat hul albei patriargale konstruksies van vroulikheid terselfdertyd beaam en kritiseer. Ons skryf hierdie paradoksale konstruksie van vroulikheid toe aan die subtiele invloed wat die tweede feministiese beweging begin uitoefen het op genderideologie in Suid-Afrika. Trefwoorde: Alba Bouwer, Sybille: Sjarmante vriendin, etiketliteratuur, sedelitera-tuur, deskriptiewe vertaalteorie, gender-performance, genderperforma-tiwiteit, rolverdelings van Afrikanervroue in die 1960's en 1970's ABSTRACT In this article we investigate the Afrikaans journalist and children's book author Alba Bouwer 's Afrikaans translation of the anonymously published German etiquette book, Charmante Freundin: Sybille (1959), as Sybille: Sjarmante vriendin (1968). Mention of Bouwer's translation of Sybille has thus far been omitted in Afrikaans literature reference sources, a remarkable oversight given Bouwer 's magisterial canon position in Afrikaans literature and the general thoroughness that characterises sources on her writing. Furthermore, notable lacunae exist of analyses or discussions of the Afrikaans etiquette book genre. To date, Afrikaans texts in this genre have not been examined or analysed and neither has the genre as such been defined in relation to the cultural milieu of its Afrikaans readers. This article seeks to initiate a discussion of not only this unexamined genre, but also this particular neglected text and its significance regarding Bouwer 's oeuvre. International theorists of etiquette books stress the status thereof as a typically female-targeted genre preoccupied with the establishment of normative feminine values, and we thus read Sybille as a script advocating a standard (Western) hegemonic gender performance. We employ Judith Butler's theories of gender performativity and gender performance to analyse Sybille's advice offered to her female readers, arguing that the speaker'sprescribed suggested female ideal concurs with normative hegemonic expectations of women in the sociohistorical context in which it was translated. Similarly, her advice hinges, semantically and in general, on women never performing their gender in an excessive or demonstrative way that she describes as "too" much. We conduct a close reading of the text itself, scanning it for the rhetorical techniques employed, specifically with regard to the narrator's seductive self-presentation and the manner in which she addresses and engages the model reader to generate a process of gendered subject formation. In this section we identify and discuss both Sybille's performed and performative dimensions as well as how these two distinct but interrelated concepts interact in the text and in its desired social outcome. By adopting a descriptive (as opposed to a prescriptive) translation theory lens, we focus on the translated text's position and function in the culture of the target language community in the late 1960s rather than on that of its original 1950s German production context. To this end we employ André Lefevre's concept of rewriting, Itamar Even-Zohar's notion of compatibility and Sandra Bermann's application of Butler's definition ofperformativity with reference to Translation Studies. With the aid of these notions, we interpret Bouwer 's translation as contributing to the inauguration of a boom of etiquette books in Afrikaans since the 1960s. Subsequently, we contextualise this translated text against the background of Afrikaner nationalist gender constructions of the 1960s and 1970s, as expressed by Bouwer and certain influential political figures. Three prescribed gendered social roles for Afrikaner women in the 1960s and 1970s are identified. Afrikaner women were expected to be: (a) mothers and wives, (b) the keepers or custodians of Afrikaner morality (c) and by implication, they were expected to act as guardians against perceived enemies of the nation (identified as Communism and the equality of different races). Our analysis illustrates that most of the Afrikaner nationalist norms and values regarding gender and its associated prescribed expected behaviours we identify were also espoused by the speaker in Sybille and therefore the source text, in terms of its propagated value assumptions and truth claims, translates seamlessly and effectively into the mainstream reading context of the target culture. Lastly, we identify throughout the paper a comparable self-contradiction in Bouwer 's own rhetoric (found in paratextual sources, such as speeches) and in that of the speaker in Sybille: both simultaneously endorse and criticise patriarchal constructions of womanhood. We ascribe this paradoxical construction offemininity to the subtle influence of Second Wave Feminism on discourses concerning gender in South Africa. Keywords: Alba Bouwer, Sybille: Sjarmante vriendin, etiquette literature; morality literature; Descriptive Translation Theory, gender performance, gender performativity, Afrikaner women's roles in the 1960s and 1970s

Introduction There is a peculiar place that inhabits the immense space of children’s literature, a place in which children enjoy a “special statute”. This is a place where, unlike other fields and due to the illustrated book’s structural specificity according to which the story is narrated through images, children can hold an equal dialogue with adults, and, if properly stimulated, show unsuspected liveliness and reading ability sometimes greater than those of adults. This special place dwells in the literary space of the picturebook. Traditionally employed with very young children (nursery and infant school) as an instrument of initiation into the pleasure of reading, the picturebook is proving to be an excellent resource for reading promotion also with older children. Objectives The research intends to examine the potential of the picturebooks and illustrated books to develop cognitive and emotional processes of visual literacy, artistic awareness and formation of critical and imaginative thought. Description The research is divided into two parts. The first part of the research concerns an international investigation on the picturebook, aiming to delineate the state of the art, in Italy and abroad, of the features, nature , potential and future perspectives of the contemporary picturebook. Such investigation has been accomplished by gathering the opinions expressed by a selected group of experts using Delphi Method. The investigation has involved some of the most important scholars of the international scientific community. Three categories of experts have been identified: professors and critics, illustrators, publishers. The expert group involved was formerly formed of 38 experts coming from Italy and the rest of the world: Europe (France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, Slovakia), Northern America (USA and Canada), Central America (Mexico) Africa (Senegal), Asia (Korea), and Australia. The second part of the research has employed the information gathered in the first part of the research to accomplish an observation research on the field. The field research has taken place in a primary school of the Province of Padua. Using the participant observation, the research group has observed the modalities of interaction, the response typology and the preferences expressed by children (6, 8 and 10 years) about the picturebooks and the illustrated books presented. The research has lingered over a the reading, analysis and iconic interpretation of the illustrated version of Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel and Bluebeard. Children have been incited to move and orient themselves inside the aesthetic-visual dimension, and will be invited to express their critical evaluation through the comparison of seven different illustrated versions of the same fairy tale. The instruments of analysis employed for the observation research have been integrated by the use of a diary on the part of the child and of his family. A figurative questionnaire has been used too. Results The results have pointed out that there is a connection between the formation of the aesthetic-visual dimension and the formation of critical and imaginative thought: teaching to look into and through things and visual-emotional literacy are deeply tied to the constructivist mental operation of meaning attribution and “meaning making”.
Introduzione C’è un luogo singolare che abita lo spazio sterminato della letteratura per l’infanzia, un luogo in cui i bambini godono di uno statuto speciale. È un luogo in cui, a differenza di altri ambiti e grazie al peculiare linguaggio della narrazione, i bambini possono dialogare alla pari con gli adulti e, se opportunamente sollecitati, dimostrano vivacità e abilità di lettura insospettabili, a volte perfino superiori a quelle degli adulti. Questo luogo speciale dimora nello spazio letterario degli albi illustrati, altresì denominati picturebook. Tradizionalmente utilizzato con i bambini più piccoli (asilo nido e scuola dell’infanzia) quale strumento di iniziazione al piacere di leggere, il picturebook si sta rivelando un’ottima risorsa anche per la promozione della lettura nei ragazzi più grandi. Obiettivi Focus della presente ricerca è quello di studiare le potenzialità che l’albo e il libro illustrato hanno di sviluppare processi emozionali e cognitivi di visual literacy, di formazione del pensiero critico e immaginifico nei bambini in età scolare. Descrizione La ricerca è suddivisa in due parti. La prima parte riguarda una ricognizione internazionale sul picturebook che ha l’obiettivo di delineare lo stato dell’arte, in Italia e all’estero, delle caratteristiche, della natura, delle potenzialità di utilizzo e le prospettive dell’albo illustrato contemporaneo. Tale ricognizione è stata effettuata raccogliendo i pareri espressi da un selezionato gruppo di esperti attraverso la tecnica Delphi. La ricerca ha coinvolto gli studiosi più accreditati della comunità scientifica internazionale che, oltre a fornire i paradigmi più significativi della ricerca sul territorio mondiale, hanno orientato il successivo lavoro di sperimentazione sul campo. Il gruppo di esperti coinvolto nella prima parte della ricerca è costituito da 28 esperti provenienti dall’Italia e da altri paesi europei ed extraeuropei: Francia, Germania, Gran Bretagna, Portogallo, Slovacchia, USA e Canada, Senegal, Messico, Corea e Australia. La seconda parte della ricerca consiste nella restituzione dei risultati di una sperimentazione osservativa sul campo, a partire dalle indicazioni raccolte nella prima parte della ricerca stessa. Durante la sperimentazione, attuata in una scuola primaria della provincia di Padova, si sono osservate le modalità di interazione, la tipologia di risposta e le preferenze espresse dai bambini (6, 8 e 10 anni) rispetto ad alcuni albi e libri illustrati di fiabe. La ricerca si è soffermata sulla lettura, sull’analisi e sull’interpretazione iconica di Cappuccetto Rosso, Hansel & Gretel, Barbablù. I bambini sono stati sollecitati a muoversi e orientarsi all’interno della dimensione estetico-visiva e invitati a formulare una propria valutazione critica attraverso il confronto di sette diverse versioni illustrate della stessa fiaba. Oltre alle note etnografiche, si sono utilizzati ulteriori strumenti di indagine quali il diario di bordo e di famiglia e un questionario figurativo. Risultati I risultati hanno evidenziato che esiste una relazione tra il piacere della lettura e la formazione della dimensione estetico-visiva, del pensiero critico e immaginifico. E, ancora, quanto l’educazione allo sguardo e l’alfabetizzazione visivo-emozionale siano intimamente legate all’operazione mentale di stampo costruttivista dell’attribuzione di senso, del “fare significato”. Grazie alla loro articolata struttura visiva, gli albi e i libri illustrati hanno suscitato, attraverso il coinvolgimento emotivo e il sentimento della curiosità, una lettura “sensuale” del libro, hanno favorito nel giovane lettore l’attitudine all’osservazione, hanno incoraggiato una maggiore partecipazione nell’interpretazione della storia.

Proposta di traduzione del libro "A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo" di Jill Twiss & Eg Keller; contestualizzazione dell'opera originale e commento alla traduzione; confronto con la traduzione italiana "Il Giorno Specialissimo di Marlon Bundo".

Theory for Beginners explores how philosophy and theory draw on children’s literature and have even come to resemble it in their strategies for cultivating the child and/or the beginner. After centuries of ignoring the child, some philosophy now considers the child an exemplary practitioner as well as subject. This attitude drives the Philosophy for Children or P4C movement, which got its start in the United States in the early 1970s and has since spread to other countries and continents. P4C has affirmed children’s literature as important philosophical work. Theory, meanwhile, has invested in some children’s classics and has also developed a literature for beginners that resembles children’s literature. After examining the P4C movement, the book turns its attention to theory for beginners and especially in the form of illustrated or graphic guides. These guides emerged from the anticolonial and Marxist work of Mexican activist and author-illustrator Eduardo del Rio, aka Rius. Rius’ Cuba Para Principiantes, or Cuba for Beginners (1970), kicked off the Beginners graphic series, emphasizing the self-teaching of political-critical awareness. The genre gradually went mainstream, losing the political edge. If philosophy is for children, and theory is for beginners, then children’s literature might also be described as a literature for minors. The third and final chapter pursues that idea, proposing more specifically that children’s and young adult literature can sometimes function as queer theory for kids.

This book explores the childhood reception of classical antiquity in Britain and the United States over a century-long period beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on two genres of children’s literature– the myth collection and the historical novel—and on adults’ literary responses to their own childhood encounters with antiquity. The book recognizes the fundamental role in writing for children of adults’ ideas about what children want or need, but also attends to the ways in which child readers make such works their own. The authors first trace the tradition of myths retold as children’s stories (and as especially suited to children) from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Kingsley to Roger Lancelyn Green and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire, treating both writers and illustrators. They then turn to historical fiction, particularly to the roles of nationality and of gender in the construction of the ancient world for modern children. They conclude with an investigation of the connections between childhood and antiquity made by writers for adults, including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Naomi Mitchison, and H.D., and with a reading of H.D.’s novella The Hedgehog as a text on the border between children’s and adult literature that thematizes both the child’s special relation to myth and the adult’s stake in children’s relationship to the classics. An epilogue offers a brief overview of recent trends, which reflect both growing uncertainty about the appeal of antiquity to modern children and an ongoing conviction that the classical past is of perennial interest.

Between Generations recuperates a tradition of adult-child collaboration in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British children’s literature and culture, charting the emergence of new models of authorship and a growing cultural imperative to recognize the young as active, creative agents. The book examines the intergenerational partnerships that generated pivotal texts from the Golden Age of children’s literature, from “The Pied Piper” to Peter Pan, and in doing so challenges popular critical narratives that read actual young people solely as social constructs or passive recipients of texts. The spectrum of adult-child partnerships included within this book’s chapters make clear that the boundary between fictive collaborations and lived partnerships was not firm but that, instead, imaginative and material practices were mutually constitutive. Adults’ partnerships with young auditors, writers, illustrators, reviewers, and co-conspirators reveal that the agentic, creative child was not only a figure but also an actor, vital to authorial practice. These collaborations were part of a larger investigation of the limits and possibilities of child agency taking place in a range of discourses and cultural venues, from education reform to psychology to librarianship. Throughout, the book considers the many Victorian writers and thinkers, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Friedrich Froebel, who question the assumed authority of adults, who write about children as both passive and subversive subjects, and who self-consciously negotiate, alongside real children, the ideological and ethical difficulties of listening to and representing children’s perspectives.

This book shows how problematic the practice of Buddhist piety could be in late imperial China. Two thematically related “precious scrolls” (baojuan) from the Ming dynasty, The Precious Scroll of the Red Gauze and The Precious Scroll of the Handkerchief, illustrate the difficulties faced by women whose religious devotion conflicted with the demands of marriage and motherhood. These two previously untranslated texts tell the stories of married women whose piety causes them to be separated from their husbands and children. While these women labor far away, their children are cruelly abused by murderous stepmothers. Following many adventures, the families are reunited by divine intervention and the evil stepmothers get their just deserts. While the texts in The Pitfalls of Piety for Married Women praise Buddhist piety, they also reveal many problems concerning married women and mothers. The text translations are preceded by an introduction that places these scrolls in the context of Ming dynasty performative literature, vernacular literature, and popular religion. Set in a milieu of rich merchants, the texts provide a unique window to family life of the time, enriching our understanding of gender during the Ming dynasty. These popular baojuan offer rare insights into lay religion and family dynamics of the Ming dynasty, and their original theme and form enrich our understanding of the various methods of storytelling that were practiced at the time.

In this chapter, we focus on the emergence of self-regulatory processes during infancy, as framed in biopsychosocial context. We begin with a brief review of the neurobiological underpinnings of early self-regulatory processes and how self-regulatory systems develop in early childhood. Next, given that infants come into the world highly dependent on caregiver support for their survival, we argue that the emergence of self-regulation occurs primarily in a relational context, and that the capacity for self-regulation reflects both self- and parent–infant co-regulatory processes. We also provide evidence to show that variations in these early self- and parent–infant regulatory processes are linked to children’s resilient or maladaptive functioning in later life. We illustrate our arguments with findings from developmental research on self-regulation in at-risk populations and in diverse contextual–cultural settings. After a brief discussion of the implications of this literature for practice, we conclude that the Mutual Regulation Model provides a useful framework for practitioners attending to the quality of the parent–infant relationship.

When in 1905 the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for outstanding services as an epic writer’, it was his novel Quo vadis. A Narrative of the Time of Nero that motivated the committee to bestow this notable honour. The extraordinary international success of Quo vadis catapulted the author into literary stardom, placing him at the top of international league tables for the sheer quantity of his readers. But, before long, the historical novel began to detach itself from the person of its author and to become a multimedial, mass–culture phenomenon. In the West and East, Quo vadis was adapted for the stage and screen, provided the inspiration for works of music and other genres of literature, was transformed into comic strips and illustrated children’s books, and was cited in advertising and referenced in everyday objects of material culture. No work in English to date has explored in depth the mechanisms that released Quo vadis into mass circulation and the influence that its diverse spin-off forms exercised on other areas of culture—even on the reception and interpretation of the literary text itself. In the context of a robust scholarly interest in the processes of literary adaptation and classical reception, and set alongside the recent emergence of interest in the ‘Ben-Hur tradition’, this volume provides a coherent forum for a much-needed exploration, from various disciplinary and national perspectives, of the multimedial transformations of Quo vadis. Uniquely, also, for its English-speaking readers this collection of essays renders more visible the cultural conquests achieved by Poland on the world map of classical reception.

In 2008, children’s author-illustrator Judith Kerr deposited her archive to Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The archive includes two illustrated stories Kerr made as a child in exile from Nazi Germany that narrate her experience of train travel in the Hitler years. This chapter reads these stories as intergenerationally solidaristic: firstly, it builds on the text by an author and an illustrator of an older generation and, secondly, it creates a bond between herself and her parents in a period of separation as a consequence of forced migration. The final part of this chapter turns to an example of train travel in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and finds that Kerr’s intergenerational solidaristic practice continued in adulthood. In this example, the children’s novel also forges a link between daughter and parents; the train in Emil and the Detectives can again be read as a departure point.

This chapter uses the rich oral histories of five people who were children in the East End of London during WWII to document where they played and what they played with, and to illustrate how oral histories can be used to record accounts of play. It interweaves these with the literature on children’s wartime experiences and also that on play and resilience (Lester and Russell, 2008), Kyttä’s (2004) work on affordances and Nicholson's (1971) theory of loose parts, helping to inform theories of play and playwork practice as enshrined in the Playwork Principles (Playwork Principles Scrutiny Group, 2005). The research displays the range of WWII play experiences and highlights the limited adult contact and input to children's play. It clearly displays the creativity and imagination of children and shows how the use of variables or loose parts helped to create rich environments of promoted or free action for children to play (Nicholson, 1971; Kytta, 2004).

At the fin de siècle, the Victorian illustrated book experienced what some critics consider a decline and others call a third period of development. “Caricature and Realism” examines the validity of both viewpoints. Publishing trends and intertwining economic and aesthetic factors led to the decline of newly released, large-circulation fiction during the final decades of the nineteenth century in England. These include the waning of serial fiction, cost factors, a rise in literacy, the changing nature of the novel, new developments in illustration, and competition from other media. However, the Victorian illustrated book thrived in several areas—certain serial formats, artists’ books, children’s literature, and the U.S. market—and in some of these forms of material culture, we witness a reengagement with the caricature tradition as well as a continuation of the representational school. This chapter surveys late Victorian illustrated fiction marketed to different audiences according to social class, age, gender, and nation. This chapter also foregrounds two fin-de-siècle author-illustrators—Beatrix Potter, best known for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and George Du Maurier, who gained fame with Trilby—to demonstrate continuity in the arc of the illustrated book and a media frenzy of Pickwickian magnitude.

This article reviews the work of Leire Bilbao, a writer belonging to a new generation of Basque authors who has managed to cross the borders of the Basque language. Since she published her first book in 2006, she has combined her poetry books for adults with children’s literature. Throughout this period, she has also made a more than interesting foray into picturebooks in collaboration with the illustrator Maite Mutuberria. Her children’s books, which range from critical realism to magical realism, are apparently simple narratives that can be read on several levels and that have a great poetic charge. Nevertheless, her two poetry books for children are, without any doubt, the most remarkable interaction between the author’s poetics and her production for children.

In children, lesions of the oral mucosa are common, and they can have various clinical signs such as ulceration, changes in the colour of mucosa or the presence of nodular lesions. Some lesions are asymptomatic, whereas others are symptomatic and sometimes even can disturb the routine activities of a child. It is important that, while evaluating the soft tissue lesions, dentists should be able to distinguish between normal, pathological conditions and normal anatomical variations. Sometimes children can present with oral mucosal lesions like those present in adults with a predisposition for some lesions. It was also observed that most of the common oral diseases were dental caries and mucosal diseases associated with cancer treatment. In literature, ere is a scarcity of information about oral lesions in children. This chapter explains various oral mucosal lesions in children along with their clinical presentation and management.

Stalking that elicits fear in the target is relatively rare below age 16. Case reports reveal that some children and adolescents exhibit stalking behavior, and research on college populations suggests that stalking behavior in late adolescence is not uncommon. Stalking is a theme seen in movies and children’s literature. The definition of stalking is used to distinguish stalking from developmentally normal following behavior commonly seen as a component of adolescent courtship, admiration, or crushes. This chapter reviews the literature on juvenile stalkers, including the frequency and patterns of juvenile stalking and the characteristics of juvenile stalkers. The chapter also provides suggestions for assessment, interventions, and legal responses in the management of the juvenile stalker. Some stalking-like behaviors are common in immature courtship behaviors of children and adolescents, but stalking characterized by repeated unwanted intrusion and communications that elicit fear in the target is relatively rare. In recent years, a number of published case reports suggest that some children and young adolescents exhibit stalking behavior, and research on college populations suggests that stalking behavior in late adolescence is not so uncommon. To help illustrate how pathological stalking overlaps with themes in normal development, this chapter begins with a survey of stalking in movies and children’s literature. The chapter then uses the definition of stalking to distinguish stalking from developmentally normal following behavior commonly seen as a component of adolescent courtship, admiration, or crushes. Literature on juvenile stalkers is then reviewed to provide a picture of how commonly stalking occurs, as well as the characteristics of juvenile stalkers. The chapter then considers certain other behaviors that resemble stalking and examines theories about how stalking behavior develops. Finally, the chapter discusses the important topic of managing the juvenile stalker, including assessment, interventions, and legal responses. Children and adolescents may be exposed to stalking behaviors and themes through television, books, and movies. The influence of media representations of crime and violence is an important avenue of exploration in general clinical work with children and adolescents.

Cynthia Laborde investigates the representation of sports in children’s literature, especially in the stories about le Petit Nicolas and his friends, published as a series of books from 1960 to 1965 by author René Goscinny and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé. Her analysis focuses both on gender roles and on differences between adults’ and children’s views of athletic activities, using Barthes’ Mythologies and Of Sports and Men as reference points, and situating the stories within the social and cultural context of post-World War II France. She suggests that during this period—when urbanization produced rapid and dramatic changes in French society, as traditional communities were dismantled with families relocating to city centres in search of employment—sports provided a means of establishing a sense of community for children and adults alike. Sports also reflected and reinforced binary gender roles, and Laborde shows how Nicholas learns these gender performances through his parents’ actions and assertions about sports. She argues that the representation of sports throughout the Le Petit Nicolas series is characterized by a tension between two views: that of adults, for whom sports are a serious endeavour; and that of children, who do not distinguish between the game and real life.

Adaptations of children's books into literary apps provide a twofold approach for literacy practise at primary school. This chapter deals with the app The Big Word Factory (2013), which is based upon the picture book of the same title, written by Agnès de Lestrade and illustrated by Valeria Docampo. An analysis of the narrative framework of literary apps is meant to show that nonlinear storytelling, a key component of numerous print works of children's literature, but also of digital narratives, may help untrained young readers develop reading motivation while print and digital readings are practised as complementary activities.

Family engagement in education refers to a partnership between schools and the community to support children's development and learning. Family engagement has been at the forefront of education initiatives in recent decades as research has shown positive effects on a variety of student outcomes. At the same time, there has been increased emphasis on integrating environmental education into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content areas. This chapter illustrates how engaging families in environmental education within STEM curricula can benefit schools, families, and the community. Existing literature on family engagement in environmental education will be explored, along with strategies to engage families. Specific strategies for engaging families who are culturally and linguistically diverse will also be discussed. The chapter concludes with recommendations taken from the literature for designing, implementing, and sustaining family engagement in environmental education.

This chapter describes the development of the fetus in the fourth month of pregnancy. As the author learns the sex of her own baby, she explores a discussion of gender and sex throughout development. Specifically, she addresses the development of sex organs prenatally and how biological sex should be differentiated from the construct of gender using examples from the animal literature to illustrate how sometimes even biological sex can be determined by environmental circumstances. The chapter also includes a lengthy discussion of the development of gender concept and gender identity in children and how parents’ expectations might affect the development of gender-stereotyped behavior.