Children's Literature Studies
Year:2010 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

The historical development of children's literature in Persian Literature shows that from ancient times some texts were written with children in mind in which advice and counsel were presented. An example isAndarz a zarb a d Mahr Sapand a n, another one is Pos Da nenshan K a mag. In the literature of after Islam, Children have a place either as the subject of whole books or are mentioned in some books; for example one can point toQ a bus N a meh of Onsor al-Ma' ali, Nas a b al-saby a n of Abu Nasr Farahi, Bah a rest a n of Jami andGulest a n-e Sa' di.In the Qajar period more and more attention was paid to children' s literature and different genres became popular. There were also translations from western literature and rewriting of ancient stories such asKalileh va Damneh, Marzb a n N a meh and textbooks and books of advice.In this paper an ancient and unknown advice book entitledKhubi Na meh is introduced for the first time. This book is of importance for three reasons; first it is one of early advice books for children in modern times. Secondly it is written by a great master of mysticism of the last century and it is lucid and simple to read, yet has a depth of meaning. Third, this book was written in an unknown village-Gonabad-which was far from the capital and major cities.

Distinction as the most important component of modernity has been emphasized by a wide range of scholars from Emil Durkheim to Pierre Bourdieu. From a theoretical perspective the children’s world is one of the distinctive social worlds, but other worlds such as adult’s world have colonized it. Recognizing its main rules and guidelines will help to avoid such colonization. Anthropology of childhood is one of the scientific disciplines which try to study these guidelines and rules.These rules make the different logic of children’s behavior understandable. Probably indistinctiveness is the most important rule of this field represented as sexual, class, ethnic, national and even aesthetic indistinctiveness. But the process of socialization reproduces distinctions because children do not have any ideas about them before being taught; we do not notice them them when children are playing freely. Children’s literature is an important tool to socialize children.Unfortunately children have been colonized by this literature because adult writers do not have enough knowledge about the main rules of children’s world. This article intends to show the distinctive foundations of three selected children’s stories. The first one isThe Ugly Ducklingby Anderson; the second one is The Little Black Fish by Behrangy and the third one isThe Sock Suicide by María Asun Landa. The results of this study show that children do not read stories like their authors and do not get the same meaning.

Fantasy is one of the practical genres in children and young adult' s literature. The most important aspect of this genre is its being imaginative and impossible to happen in the real world. Fantasies are divided into two types of common and modern. Epics and myths are the best works to produce common fantasies. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh has all the characteristics of fantasy making as it contains exceptional adventures and characters as well as suitable themes. Through fantasizing Shahnameh children and young adults will not only get acquainted with ancient texts but also enjoy the imaginary world of the adventures. In this paper the genre fantasy is first introduced and the aims of making fantasies from myths and epic are discussed; then the elements of fantasy such as characterization, plot and entrance to fantasy are discussed. Fifteen texts are chosen and classified and the data are compared with some stories of Shahnameh. Based on this comparison parts of Shahnameh which are suitable for making fantasy are introduced.

In this paper the development of criticism of children and young adult's literature from the time of Constitutional Revolution in Iran to the present is studied to show its overall progressive state. This development has indeed continued but mostly in two aspects; one is presenting a list of suitable books and the second is long specialized critiques. Though valuable, these two aspects have limited uses and cannot, on their own, help spread and establish the current of criticism. The paper suggests paying attention to another aspect as well, that is, book review, on a large scale in paper journals or on the virtual space. Book reviews have their limitations but can enrich the domain of children's literature.

In order for the thoughts of the reader within the book to be formed, two people are necessary to say something and that the writer, in order to reveal his intended meaning creates certain relationships with the reader within his text. When the writer starts the narration, s/he considers a reader/listener called patterned by Umberto Eco; the patterned reader is a picture of an imaginary reader created by the writer in order to arrange his ideas. Aidan Chambers believes that in order to find this reader who he calls "the implied reader in the book", it is necessary to consider the child as the reader in the book, not outside it. Chambers suggests that to find this implied reader "in the book" and his/her characteristics, some features such as style, point of view and empty spaces for the reader to participate in creating elements of the story must be analyzed. This paper uses Chambers' theory to analyze three stories of Akbarpour which have been popular in the past years (That Night's Train, Emperor of Words and I ' m not My Father's Servant).

Experts believe that the concept of death for children can be analyzed from three aspects of biological, emotional and cultural. The aim of this paper is to study the concept of death from biological (nonreturnable, unavoidable, nonfunctional and causal), cultural and emotional (fear, anger, distress, desire, sin, rejection, doubt and confusion) in children's story books. Thus after searching nine books which had a theme related to death were chosen. In each book every sentence which had some connection to death was coded. Interrated coefficient was used to calculate reliability. The results showed that there is a significant difference between biological, emotional and cultural aspects of death in these books. In comparing biological and emotional factors there was a significant difference in the biological factor; and in comparing cultural and emotional factors there was a significance difference in the cultural factor. However, there was no significant difference between cultural and biological factors. It was concluded that in the biological aspect only nonreturnability and causality were mentioned in the books; none of the books mentioned anything about unavoidability and nonfunctionality of death. From the emotional aspect books had only mentioned fear, anger, distress and rejection but not, desire, sin, doubt or confusion.

Critical Discourse Analysis intends to reveal the interaction between language, power and ideology. To do so, it tries to uncover the discursive features by which power and ideology are inherent in language. CDA has been usually applied to political texts. The aim of this study is to analyze and compare the discursive features in juveniles' and adults' short stories to find how and to what extent, literature writers use these features and conceal their ideas. To this end, 10 adults' and 10 juveniles' short stories were selected. Discursive features in these texts were examined on the basis of Van Leewen' s model. T-unit was utilized to determine the length of the stories. Then, the percentage of the discursive features was determined in both kinds of stories. Also chi-square (X2) was calculated to show the significance of the differences between the two groups of books. The results are as follows:1. In literature, there are some other discursive features which are used for concealment.2. The difference between juvenile and adult short stories in using the discursive features is not significant.3. Adult short stories apply more discursive features than juvenile short stories.4. There are more literary features in juveniles' short stories than adults' ones.5. Discursive features in literature are not used to conceal the reality, but to reveal and emphasize it.6. Literary texts can also be used to exert power for political purposes.