Global Perspectives On Death In Children S Literature

This volume visits death in children's literature from around the world, making a substantial contribution to the dialogue between the expanding fields of Childhood Studies, Children's Literature, and Death Studies. Considering both textual and pictorial representations of death, contributors focus on the topic of death in children's literature as a physical reality, a philosophical concept, a psychologically challenging adjustment, and/or a social construct. Essays covering literature from the US, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, India, and Iran display a diverse range of theoretical and cultural perspectives. Carefully organized sections interrogate how classic texts have been adapted for the twenty-first century, how death has been politicized, ritualized, or metaphorized, and visual strategies for representing death, and how death has been represented within the context of play. Asking how different cultures present the concept of death to children, this volume is the first to bring together a global range of perspective on death in children's literature and will be a valuable contribution to an array of disciplines.

KEY BENEFT: This book presents a comprehensive discussion of international children's books and their use in K-8 classrooms. KEY TOPICS Global Perspectives in Children's Literature reviews the status of children's literature around the world and elaborates on the benefits of international children's literature for children's development and the curriculum. The book presents various genres such as picture books, fiction, informational books, and poetry. Issues in the field and criteria for selecting books to be used in the classroom are provided, as well as a discussion of history and contemporary trends worldwide. Specific ways to share international books are also presented, as they relate to theme studies, specific content areas, visual literacy, and language arts. Useful for anyone interested in global education, specifically that of Children's Literature.

This volume visits death in children’s literature from around the world, making a substantial contribution to the dialogue between the expanding fields of Childhood Studies, Children’s Literature, and Death Studies. Considering both textual and pictorial representations of death, contributors focus on the topic of death in children’s literature as a physical reality, a philosophical concept, a psychologically challenging adjustment, and/or a social construct. Essays covering literature from the US, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, India, and Iran display a diverse range of theoretical and cultural perspectives. Carefully organized sections interrogate how classic texts have been adapted for the twenty-first century, how death has been politicized, ritualized, or metaphorized, and visual strategies for representing death, and how death has been represented within the context of play. Asking how different cultures present the concept of death to children, this volume is the first to bring together a global range of perspective on death in children’s literature and will be a valuable contribution to an array of disciplines.

A boy, age four, could not understand what had happened to a little girl in his nursery school. His mother explained that Angie had died and had been buried in the earth. Later, she found him and his playmates digging in the backyard, trying to find Angie so that we can play with her. Books can be a valuable resource in helping a young person understand. Fortunately, in much of the literature for children--folklore, the classics, modern works--there is an abundance of tasteful, truthful, and artistic material. This book discusses death in general, adult and child responses to it, its treatment in folklore (nursery rhymes, etc.), and the classics of children's literature and books currently available in public and school libraries. For younger and older children: the death of a pet, a friend, a relative, and one's own death.

The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature seeks to understand the ways in which literature has engaged deeply with the ever-evolving relationship humanity has with its ultimate demise. It is the most comprehensive collection in this growing field of study and includes essays by Brian McHale, Catherine Belling, Ronald Schleifer, Helen Swift, and Ira Nadel, as well as the work of a generation of younger scholars from around the globe, who bring valuable transnational insights. Encompassing a diverse range of mediums and genres – including biography and autobiography, documentary, drama, elegy, film, the novel and graphic novel, opera, picturebooks, poetry, television, and more – the contributors offer a dynamic mix of approaches that range from expansive perspectives on particular periods and genres to extended analyses of select case studies. Essays are included from every major Western period, including Classical, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and so on, right up to the contemporary. This collection provides a telling demonstration of the myriad ways that humanity has learned to live with the inevitability of death, where “live with” itself might mean any number of things: from consoling, to memorializing, to rationalizing, to fending off, to evading, and, perhaps most compellingly of all, to escaping. Engagingly written and drawing on examples from around the world, this volume is indispensable to both students and scholars working in the fields of medical humanities, thanatography (death studies), life writing, Victorian studies, modernist studies, narrative, contemporary fiction, popular culture, and more.

Drawing from primary research studies in archaeology, historical analysis, literature, and art this interdisciplinary look at the history of child funerary practices and other vehicles of parental mourning is the only book of its kind. The purpose of this work is to investigate the ways in which funerary behaviors and grieving differ between cultures and across time; from prehistory to modern history. Philippe Aries, the French childhood historian, argued that children were rarely mourned upon their deaths as child death was a frequent and expected event, especially in the Middle Ages. This book draws upon archaeological reports, secondary data analysis, and analysis of literature, photography and artwork to refute, and in some cases support, Aries's claim. Organized in two parts, Part One begins with a chapter on the causes of childhood mortality and the steps taken to prevent it, followed by chapters on prehistory, ancient civilizations, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the early modern and late modern eras. The chapters in Part Two discuss indicators of parental concern at a child's death: naming practices, replacement strategy, baptism, consolation literature, and artwork. Students who focus on the psychological aspects of death, funeral practices, and childhood histories will find this book a useful and comprehensive tool for examining how children have been mourned since prehistory.

Do Funerals Matter? is a creative interweaving of historical, sociocultural, and research-based perspectives on death rituals, drawing from myriad sources to create a picture of what death rituals have been; and where, especially in the Western world, they are going. Death educators, researchers, counselors, clergy, funeral-service professionals, and others will appreciate the book’s theory- and research-based approach to the ways in which different cultural groups memorialize their dead. They will also find clear clinical and practical applications in the author’s exploration of the five ritual anchors of death-related ceremonial practice and help for professionals counseling the bereaved surrounding funerals. Based on nearly three decades of research and teaching on funeral rites, this volume promises to fill an important gap in the cross-cultural literature on bereavement, while answering an important question for our generation: Do funerals matter?

Death squads have become an increasingly common feature of the modern world. In nearly all instances, their establishment is tolerated, encouraged, or undertaken by the state itself, which thereby risks its monopoly on the use of force, one of the fundamental characteristics of modern states. Why do such a variety of regimes, under very different circumstances, condone such activity? Death Squads in Global Perspective hopes to answer that question and explain not only their development, but also why they can be expected to proliferate in the early 21st century.