Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde (Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition)

Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde is the first study that investigates the intricate influence of the avant-garde movements on children's literature in different countries from the beginning of the 20th century until the present. Examining a wide range of children's books from Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the USA, the individual chapters explore the historical as well as the cultural and political aspects that determine the exceptional character of avant-garde children's books. Drawing on studies in children's literature research, art history, and cultural studies, this volume provides comprehensive insights into the close relationships between avant-garde children's literature, images of childhood, and contemporary ideas of education. Addressing topics such as the impact of exhibitions, the significance of the Bauhaus, and the influence of poster art and graphic design, the book illustrates the broad range of issues associated with avant-garde children's books. More than 60 full-color illustrations demonstrate the impressive variety of design in avant-garde picturebooks and children's books. Winner of the Edited Book Award 2017 of The Children's Literature Association. Winner of the Edited Book Award 2017 of the International Research Society for Children's Literature. Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde Editorial page Title page LCC data Table of contents Table of figures Introduction What is Avant-garde? Avant-garde and children’s books Aims of this volume Selected bibliography John Ruskin and the mutual influences of children’s literature and the avant-garde The condition of childhood Influence of improved printing for children Children’s literature and culture as Purveyors of the Grotesque Political caricaturists as children’s book illustrators Roots of the picturebook in total design References Primary sources Secondary sources Einar Nerman – From the picturebook page to the avant-garde stage Caricature artist, painter and performer Crow’s Dream – An animal revolution Darkness and light From stage designs to picturebooks Mass culture, children’s literature and the avant-garde References Primary sources Secondary sources Sándor Bortnyik and an inter-war Hungarian children’s book Introduction Publication variations The book Sándor Bortnyik: Biography and activity Bortnyik in Germany Return to Hungary Hungarian modernism and its origins Modernism and its relationship to graphic design Potty és Pötty: Illustrations and text Bortnyik and children’s books Conclusion Acknowledgments References Primary sources Secondary sources The forgotten history of avant-garde publishing for children in early twentieth-century Britain Recovering Britain’s lost avant-garde legacy Surrealism and British children’s fiction: Jean de Bosschère The City Curious (1920) Childhood recaptured: Child art and children’s literature in Britain The Émigré effect: Adapting European techniques to British tastes Avant-garde echoes Experimental landscapes: Avant-garde arts meet the English landscape Acknowledgement References Primary sources Secondary sources The square as regal infant Introduction Kazimir Malevich and the avant-garde infantile Shape, Geometry, and the Infantile El Lissitzky and the avant-garde infantile Vladimir Lebedev and the avant-garde infantile Conclusion References Primary sources Secondary sources The 1929 Amsterdam exhibition of early Soviet children’s picturebooks Historical background Publishing children’s books in the early Soviet Union Early Soviet children’s books Illustrators of Soviet children’s books Early exhibitions of Soviet children’s books The organization of the 1929 Amsterdam exhibition The reconstruction of the exhibition Representativeness The reception Conclusions References Primary sources Secondary sources Appendix Rupture. ideological, aesthetic, and educational transformations in Danish picturebooks around 1933 A new society, a new child, a new picturebook The new world presented in Jørgens Hjul The education of the socialist citizen Aesthetic appeal in text and image Toward a pedagogic poetics. Progressive educational ideals in Denmark around 1933 The complexity of ‘The New’ References Primary sources Secondary sources Mirror images Let us be as children, or the cruel games of the avant-garde The B-attle of letters, or the triumph of typesetting: How the scarecrow was criss-crossed Africans, animals and dolls: The games of émigrés and surrealists The left “here and now” for American and Soviet children Conclusion References Primary sources Secondary sources Just what is it that makes Pop Art picturebooks so different, so appealing? An iconic collage What is Pop Art? The emergence of Pop Art picturebooks Characteristics of Pop Art picturebooks Some typical Pop Art picturebooks The impact of Pop Art picturebooks References Primary sources Secondary sources Surrealism for children Knowledge Experience Audience, Part I: The problem Audience, Part II: Solutions (Some successful, some not) Two case studies: Crockett Johnson and Hervé Tullet References Primary sources Secondary sources Subject Index Name Index This chapter addresses what an avant-garde for children might look like, and what it might do. It is called "Surrealism for Children: Paradoxes and Possibilities" because the very notion of an avant-garde for children strikes the author as both paradoxical and not, and as both possible and impossible. In making this claim, the author argues with - and revises - his own analysis in The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks (2002), which took for granted that an avant-garde for children was both possible and critically viable. What he once accepted as a certainty, he now Edited By Elina Druker, Stockholm University ; Bettina Kümmerling-meibauer, Eberhard Karls-universität Tübingen. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.