Representing the Holocaust in Children's Literature (Children's Literature and Culture)

Writing about the Holocaust and writing for young readers evoke two quite separate sets of concerns which are not always mutually compatible. The first half of Representing the Holocaust focuses on how literary material can present historically verifiable material. The second half examines how such materials will be perceived by young readers; whether they will be able to determine any boundaries between fictionality and factuality, and what motivates young readers to keep reading. The work concludes by placing the study in the context of Holocaust education. How can the unspeakable be represented? Writing stories for children about the horror of the Holocaust presents an unusual challenge. Steering a course through literary, historical, and ethical concerns, authors must find ways to engage young readers with the serious truths of genocide, brutality, and human suffering at its most extreme. How can these writers capture a child's attention without exploiting the subject, the victims, or the reader? The last two decades have seen an upsurge in attempts to make the Holocaust comprehensible to young people through novels, biographies, and picture books. This unique study examines genres of Holocaust literature for children and young adults in order to explore the ways in which material that has been called "unrepresentable" can be portrayed. Drawing upon a large corpus of texts that address Nazi persecution of Jewish, Gypsy, Mischling, Catholic, Slavic, and gay populations, Lydia Kokkola outlines various narrative approaches to the representation of horror. She provides stirring analyses of selected works by David Adler, Erich Hackl, Louis Begley, Maurice Sendak, Art Spiegelman, and Carol Matas, among others. Specific topics of discussion include the rhetoric and power of silence, the reliability of life writing, and the attraction/revulsion of Holocaust literature. In its probing search for answers, this book invites readers to consider the challenge of sustaining appreciation for the horrors of history among adults and children alike. Deals with the issue of how children should be taught about the Holocaust via literature. Among the problems discussed are the difficulties of writing about atrocity, and ways of combining "faction" and fiction so that children understand that fiction may convey truths about time, place, and types of events. Discusses the need to "pleasure" readers so that they will continue to read despite the extremely unpleasurable topics. Favors the approach of "ethical criticism" to Holocaust literature for children (a number of examples are discussed), since the reading of such literature affects a child's understanding both of the Holocaust and of antisemitism and racism encountered in his or her own experience. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism) It may seem perverse to feel the need to pause and consider exactly what the role of writing has upon representations of the Holocaust-an evasion of the appalling historical reality. First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company Lydia Kokkola. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 189-198) And Index.