"It's Not Just Writing": Negotiating Childness in Children's Literature Through Performance

Tandoi, Eve ORCID: 0000-0001-6178-7749 (2019) "It's Not Just Writing": Negotiating Childness in Children's Literature Through Performance. Children’s Literature in Education, 50 (1). pp. 76-89. doi:10.1007/s10583-018-9377-3

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Abstract

This article reflects on insights gained from a larger study that explored how a class of ten to eleven-year olds read and responded to David Almond’s hybrid novel, My Name is Mina. Through focusing on the children’s performances of the poems contained within the text the discussion examines embodied aspects of the children’s engagement and suggests that these play a critical role in the children’s shared readership. The implications of this analysis are then considered in relation to Peter Hollindale’s definition of ‘childness’ and it is argued that a closer analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale reveals tensions inherent between linguistic constructions of childness within the text and embodied performances on stage. Drawing on critical perspectives from children’s literature theory and research conducted on classroom dialogue, the article argues that children make use of their social and physical positioning to engage in fictive negotiations of childness and adultness and, in so doing, co-create the aesthetic experience that we refer to as children’s literature.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Childness; Adultness; David Almond; Children’s poetry; Embodiment; Hybrid novels; Performance; Peter Hollindale; Reader response; Shakespeare; The material turn; REF2021
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PZ Childrens literature
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Education and Science
Research Priority Areas:	Society and Learning
Depositing User:	Susan Turner
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2018 15:42
Last Modified:	04 Feb 2022 12:15
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/5356

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