Lydia Kokkola

• PhD
• Lecturer at Oulu University Finland

This article takes Donna Haraway’s claim that “We are compost” as a literal statement. Combining Human-Plant Studies (HPS) with the study of children’s literature, the article examines a novel set in the European Arctic as starting point for imagining what it means to live as compost. In the novel, Som om jag inte fanns [As though I wasn’t there] b...

This study focuses on challenging representations of Sámi characters and cultures in Swedish literary works for young readers: “Bamse möter Stallo” (Bamsy Meets Stállu, 2021), a cartoon intended for pre-literate and young readers, Lilli, Lávre och Saivofolket (Lilli, Lávre and the Sáivu People, 2021), a picturebook, and När vi var samer (When We We...

In Sápmi (better known in English by its colonial name, ‘Lapland’), there are eight dis-tinctly named seasons and eight distinctly named directions. This naming of concepts related to direction and the passage of time entwines the need to navigate long distances with an intimate knowledge of the changing landscape. Way-finding in the Arctic de-mand...

As English dominates the Internet, most education systems need to prepare pupils to perform L2 information searches. Generating efficient search terms and understanding the information retrieved requires good vocabulary knowledge. This study examined the relationship between vocabulary knowledge, L2 online searching, and attitudes towards online se...

In Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed discusses the spatial dimensions of orientation, asking not only ‘What does it mean to be oriented?’ but also ‘What does it mean for sexuality to be lived as oriented? What difference does it make what or who we are oriented toward in the very direction of our desire?’ (1). This article uses Ahmed's idea of sexual...

Although plagiarism has a much longer history, many teachers of English have noticed that the amount of copying has increased alongside the use of the Internet. The paper begins with a review of the literature demonstrates that although much attention has been paid to undergraduates in academic environments, little attention has been paid to plagia...

Learning a foreign language provides an entry point into the lives of cultural ‘others’, as does the reading of realistic fiction. Responding to the challenges of both tasks requires concerted cognitive effort, but also creativity. First, individuals need to override the automatic tendency to prioritise their own point of view and then, at least te...

This article highlights cultural appropriation in the literary representation of the Sámi (the indigenous people of the European Arctic) in two Swedish YA series: the Soppero quartet by the Sámi author Ann-Helén Laestadius, and the Idijärvi trilogy by Charlotte Cederlund, a non-Sámi writer. Despite their different origins, the series are more simil...

The aim of this paper is to argue for an interdisciplinary research agenda to the study of reading. We discuss the methodological and educational/practical challenges and opportunities that an embodied cognitive and distributed language perspective entails for literacy and education research. Although an increasing body of research pivots on the em...

This is a position paper by the guest editors of the Barnboken theme “Diversity in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature” in which we propose that theorising and promoting diversity in the Nordic context would benefit from a broadening of the approaches that dominate the British and American contexts. We attempt to tone down the confrontatio...

Introduction: Diversity in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Whilst the colonial practices of child removal outside of Europe are (in-)famous, similar practices within Europe have received less critical attention. This paper examines novels and short stories set in Sweden, Finland, and the border area known as the Torne Valley. It analyses the literary portrayal of the forced removals of children, almost exc...

In this paper, we use the term ‘Finnish exceptionalism’ to refer to the myth that Finland was only ever a victim of colonization and never complicit in colonial practices. We argue that cultural adherence to this belief and consequent innocence have been inculcated into Finnish national consciousness from the country’s inception. Using two novels f...

This paper draws on two forms of cognitive studies to examine how a minority language literature cultivates feelings of in-group belonging. The minority in focus are the Tornedalingar: Swedish nationals who live near the Torne River which marks the border with Finland. The official language of the Tornedalingar is ‘‘Mea¨nkieli’’ which literally tra...

Today, Sweden enjoys a positive international reputation for its commitment to human rights issues, for instance, in relation to the recent migrant crisis. Abuses committed by the Swedish state against certain ethnic groups within the country are less well known, both within and beyond its borders. These included systematic attempts to curtail the...

A review of a book by Joe Sutliff Sanders

The Embodied Child: Readings in Children’s Literature and Culture brings together essays that offer compelling analyses of children’s bodies as they read and are read, as they interact with literature and other cultural artifacts, and as they are constructed in literature and popular culture. The chapters examine the ideology behind the cultural co...

This article compares the discourse of sibling incest evident in a corpus of fiction with the discourse found in clinical, sociological and criminal literature. Whereas the former primarily regards the coupling as a bad romance, the latter presents the idea that it is unequivocally harmful. This discrepancy between the two discourses surrounding se...

This vividly written reflection on research content, dissemination of knowledge, the researcher’s selfhood and ethical choices at a career point at which the author’s work is highly recognized and speaking invitations abound is a personal account of her decision to leave the field of Holocaust studies. Kokkola explains how she used elements from he...

This paper situates Margarita Engle's verse novel, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom (2008), in both the historical context it depicts (the various wars against Spain 1850-99) and the emerging field of human-plant studies (HPS). Noting that Cuba's indigenous population was destroyed by genocide and imported illnesses, the pap...

The article discusses selected works by the Western Canadian writer Robert Kroetsch (1927–2011) within the context of the biography battles which peaked during the 1990s. Kroetsch played a critical role in the formation and honing of a distinctive Prairie literary tradition in Canada, and we discuss a series of his poetic and other works published...

The article discusses selected works by the Western Canadian writer Robert Kroetsch (1927–2011) within the context of the biography battles which peaked during the 1990s. Kroetsch played a critical role in the formation and honing of a distinctive Prairie literary tradition in Canada, and we discuss a series of his poetic and other works published...

View full resolution The Sámi are the indigenous people of Sápmi – a region of Northern Europe (also referred to as ‘Lapland’) which spreads across Norway, Sweden, Finland and into North-Eastern Russia. Traditionally, the Sámi have been reindeer herders, which has resulted in a nomadic lifestyle following the seasonal movements of the herds. These...

This vividly written reflection on research content, dissemination of knowledge, the researcher's selfhood and ethical choices at a career point at which the author's work is highly recognized and speaking invitations abound is a personal account of her decision to leave the field of Holocaust studies. Kokkola explains how she used elements from he...

REVIEWS 207 van waan en wijs useful for academic purposes, its jargon free and lucid style will also attract non-academic readers. The collection proves not only that children's literature deserves a separate and comprehensive historical literary study but also that it merits a combination of diverse approaches. Finally, studies like Een land van w...

Images of human-animal-machine mergers—“cyborgs” in Donna Haraway’s terminology—are ways of exploring the human/non-human dichotomy and embracing non-human features as empowering: the cyborg supposedly enables humans to achieve their full potential by going beyond anthropocentric boundaries. Alternatively, the cyborg may not result in the empowerme...

Appearing first as a weekly serial in the Christian Herald, Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna was first published in book form in 1913. This popular story of an impoverished orphan girl who travels from America's western frontier to live with her wealthy maternal Aunt Polly in the fictional east coast town of Beldingsville went through forty-seven prin...

Resisting the will to empathise with a focalised character is assumed to be difficult for young readers, yet empirical evidence on how they actually respond is limited. This paper combines recent insights gleaned from cognitive literary studies with a small-scale empirical study of thirty-five Swedish adolescents reading an Irish short story in ord...

Home is often assumed to be a safe place, a place to which children can return after their adventures Away. For many gay and lesbian teens, both fictional and in real life, however, the space they share with their family of origin is not a place where they can feel at home. The heterosexual family home is often so hostile to queerly desiring teens...

A Latin Caribbean (forced) migration experience is at the centre of Angie Cruz's 2005 novel, Let It Rain Coffee, which depicts the life and history of the Colón family in three different time periods (the early 1920s, the 1960s, and the 1990s) in the Dominican Republic as well as in New York City. This article focuses on the early 1990s immigrant e...

The picturebook author-illustrator Pija Lindenbaum (b. 1979) rose early to public attention in her native country of Sweden with her first book Else-Marie och småpapporna / Else-Marie and the Seven Small Daddies in 1990, but it was her second book Boken om Bodil / Boodil My Dog which brought attention from the International community and for which...

In the claymation film Chicken Run (2000), the feminist activist chicken, Ginger, attempts to rouse her sisters in the coop to join the revolt. In the midst of a rousing speech, she declares “We either die free chickens, or we die trying.” Rather than rising to the allure of such binary thinking, the “stupid” chicken, Babs, asks “Are those the only...

Twice short-listed for the Hans Christian Andersen prize for illustration, the British nominee John Burningham has averaged more than a book a year since 1963. This prolific output includes illustrations of other people’s writing, including works for adults on topics as varied as champagne and aging (upon reflection, might the two be related?), alt...

Photo of performance of When Winter’s Stars Shine Here. View full resolution On a cold winter’s night in Norrland, Sweden’s most northern district, the snow falls as two teenagers wait for their bus home from school. They are annoyed because their teacher was unimpressed by their presentations about their ethnic identity and their relationship to t...

The ability to shift reading position has long been recognised as a means for politically minded readers – particularly those motivated by Marxist, feminist and/or race-related agendas – to read against the grain and uncover the implicit ideologies in the text. Little research has been conducted on how inexperienced and thus less sophisticated read...

This paper focuses on the child reading the literatures discussed in the other articles in this special issue of Bookbird. More specifically, it focuses on how the bilingual brain differs from the monolingual brain, and provides a general overview of those areas of difference that relate to reading. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implica...

Fictions of Adolescent Carnality considers one of the most controversial topics related to adolescents: their experience of desire. In fiction for adolescents, carnal desire is variously presented as a source of angst, an overwhelming experience over which one has no control, bestial, disgusting and, just occasionally, a source of pleasure. The on-...

John Burningham, the British candidate for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen prize for illustration, has been a prolific author-illustrator of picture books, producing more than a book a year for over half a century. His works appeal to children, adults, critics, and teachers in different but overlapping ways. Although he claims “I am not thinking a...

Dear Bookbird Readers, This issue of Bookbird comes to you with greetings from the 33rd IBBY Congress, which will be held in London, 23–26 August 2012. The Congress theme—Crossing Boundaries: Translations and Migrations—follows the goals Jella Lepman held when she founded IBBY and the International Youth Library in Munich. Lepman returned to war-to...

“I want to try to create a diff erentiated insight into the historical and social conditions of standards, values and world views to achieve a better understanding of different forms of life.” Monika Pelz was born in Vienna in 1944. She worked as a journalist, secretary, and translator before she took up her formal studies in philosophy and history...

Bianca Pitzorno was born in Sassari in 1942, but lives and works in Milan. After a formal education in archeology and classical literature, Pitzorno began her career producing television programs. She became an author of books for girls at the age of 28, and has so far produced over 40 novels and picture books for children and teenagers, as well as...

“All pedagogical art is bad art, but all good art is pedagogical.” Lennart Hellsing has played a leading role in the development of Swedish children’s literature for more than sixty years. This “grand old man” of Swedish writing for children was born in central Sweden in 1919, and during the course of his long career has produced over sixty books i...

Louis Joos was born in Brussels in 1940. He did not complete his formal education at the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Brussels, because he felt that he was learning no new technical skills and was not developing as a person either. However he did work as an assistant in the engraving classes at the Academy, and a passion for working in black and white...

“I have a theory that children get more involved in picture books without any people in them at all—I make the child reading a book into the main character, quite simply.” The Swedish illustrator Anna-Clara Tidholm (born in Stockholm in 1946) is entirely selftaught. Her formal training was in literature, and she worked as a journalist for many year...

“I have a quiet, reserved character; drawing was a hideaway, a private very interesting world.” Anita Paegle was born in the capital of Latvia, Riga, in 1956. She completed her formal education in graphic art at the Art Academy of Latvia, and began producing illustrations for children’s books in her mid-twenties. At that time, there was only one pu...

“It is the duty of everyone alive today to ensure that what happened in Hiroshima on that fateful day is not forgotten and is never repeated.” Born in Hiroshima in 1942, Masamoto Nasu was only three years old when the atomic bomb fell just three kilometers from his home. Although he originally studied forest entomology and worked as a car salesman,...

Francesco Tullio Altan was born in Treviso in 1942. After attending school in Bologna, he studied architecture in Venice. In the late 1960s, he moved to Rome where he combined his interest in architecture with his love of drawing as a set designer, as well as working as a script writer. After a short period in Brazil working in the film industry, h...

“I hope that my pictures open up in different ways to different people of different ages.” Born in Ostrobothnia, on the North-West coast of Finland, in 1961, Virpi Talvitie originally trained as a graphic artist, and her early work was for newspapers and journals. She began illustrating books for children in 1998, and has since produced ten picture...

“You can portray emotions better with animals.” Kathrin Schärer was born in Basel in 1969. She originally trained in both art and education, and currently works in a school for children with speech difficulties. Her career as a picture book illustrator began when she was looking for an Easter book for her niece, but could only find “kitschy bunny s...

“I believe that a fairy tale should not be limited to one country or one era or impose boundaries and rules. Its purpose is to offer a fantastic journey.” Effie Lada was born in a small village in Peloponnese, Greece in 1959. After taking entry exams for medical school, she decided to end her formal education and became a fulltime mother and wife....

Øyvind Torseter (born 1972), the Oslo born and bred illustrator, undertook his formal education at the Mercantile Institute in Oslo (1991–1992) and the School of Graphic Design (1992–1994), after which he travelled to the United Kingdom to study at the Kent Institute of Art and Design (1995–1998). Within a year of completing his studies, he had pro...

“When I write, I do not think about potential readers, instead I write for the child in me.” Paul Maar was born in Schweinfurt, Germany in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. His mother died when he was an infant and his father was away, first as a soldier and then as a prisoner of war. As a result, Maar’s early childhood yea...

“My point of departure is never color or composition; it is the expression.” Charlotte Pardi has been drawing since she was old enough to hold a crayon. Born in 1971, Pardi grew up drawing, usually on paper but also on the walls of her home in the small village of Spentrup in Jutland, Denmark. She completed her formal education at The Kolding Schoo...

“Good and evil are not defined in advance. It’s the particular lens we look through that determines how we see the world.” The Danish author Lene Kaaberbøl began her career with the publication of her first book Den Forste Bog om Tina og Hestene [The First Book about Tina and the Horses] in 1975, when she was just fifteen. This was the start of a s...

“I devote all my energy to being able to finance the making of books. That is wastefulness. But it is important for me, it makes me happy, and that is why I do it.” Renate Habinger was born in Sankt Pölten in 1956 and now lives in Oberndorf in Lower Austria, but spent much of early adulthood in Asia learning paper-making, plant dyeing, printing tec...

“Through my stories I exorcize ghosts and turn weaknesses to strengths.” Christos Boulotis was born in 1952 in Myrina on the Aegean island of Lemnos. He moved to Athens with his family as a child, and still lives there, combining his work as an archaeologist with his work as an author. His formal training in archaeology, ancient history, and Greek...

Sinikka (b. 1953) and her sister Tiina (b. 1955) Nopola were both born in Helsinki, but moved to Tampere when they were children. Sinikka graduated with an MA from Tampere University before returning to Helsinki, where she initially worked as a journalist. Tiina worked for the city of Helsinki and as a specialist kindergarten teacher before becomin...

Sun-Mi Hwang was born in Hongseong, Korea, in 1963. Unable to afford middle school, she was given the key to a classroom by an understanding teacher, and so read books and educated herself. She was able to attend high school and the Seoul Institute of the Arts, Gwangju University and the Graduate School of Cung-ang University. Despite degrees in cr...

Bjørn Sortland (born 1968) spent his childhood years in the small town of Sortland on the island of Bømlo. (Sortland has since changed its name to Svortland, a change the author has not forgiven them for yet!) He originally trained as a social worker and worked in that field for several years before taking a writing course in the town where he was...

The son of two teachers, Franz Hohler was born in Biel in 1943. An ardent reader before he started school, he published his first story before he left school. He began his university studies in German and the Romance languages, but never graduated. He created a one-man cabaret act and went on tour with it through Switzerland, Germany and Austria. T...

“The very wellspring of an artist is her memory. Without memory there’s no recollection; without recollections we are nobody, nothing at all.” Antonia Johanna Dragt, better known as Tonke Dragt, was born in 1930 in Batavia (now Jakarta) in Indonesia (then known as the Dutch East Indies). She spent much of her childhood there, including three years...

Annemarie van Haeringen was born in Haarlem, in 1959. Her formal education as a teacher of drawing and handicrafts was followed by studies at the Rietveld Academy for Art, Amsterdam. Following her graduation, she formed a collective with three other illustrators, and together they established contacts with the publishing industry. She left the coll...

Born in Fukui Prefecture in 1926, Satoshu Kako originally trained as an applied chemist and had a successful career a chemical engineer. Already as a student, he produced and performed in theatrical works for children. His preferred form—kamishibai (play-card) theater—is a form of storytelling that incorporates illustrations and direct communicatio...

Seong-Chan Hong was born in Seoul in 1929, where lived through both the Japanese colonial era (1910–1945) and the Korean War (1950–1953). Although not formally trained as an artist, he began his career as an illustrator in 1955, and quickly established a reputation as an historical illustrator. However, he did not begin to work as a children’s book...

“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings.” The son of an Air Force pilot, Philip Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946, but spent much of his early childhood in his Grandparents’ rectory where he heard stories combining the landscape, history, Biblical stories and fiction; elements that were to...

The Flemish-speaking Belgian author, Bart Moeyaert, is the seventh son in a family from Bruges. His first novel, Duet met valse noten [The Off-Key Duet], was written when he was just nineteen. This award-winning autobiography was subsequently turned into a play and a musical, and has been translated into several languages. As a result of the succes...

“The reading of pictures is not only not cultivated but also even driven out of children.” Rotraut Susanne Berner was born in Stuttgart in 1948. She completed her formal education in graphic design at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. Before entering the field of children’s illustration, Berner worked for several years in publisher adverti...

John Burningham (b. 1936) was very young when the Second World War broke out, which contributed to his unusual childhood, some of which was spent living in a caravan because his parents rented out their home to pay for school fees. Burningham attended nine different experimental boarding schools, including Summerhill. Burningham left Summerhill wit...

:The author provides an in-depth examination of the popular Twilight series in terms of the depiction of self-harming behaviors, noting interesting parallels with theories about battered women and raising questions about how such issues are handled in novels for young people.

It is presumed that readers of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ enjoy the sexual tension between Bella and Edward; a tension that remains unresolved until the couple are married. This very traditional solution to the couple’s carnal desires is just one of many ways in which the novels adhere to the conventions of romance writing for young people. Reade...

Melvin Burgess has gained a reputation as an enfant terrible, whose writing tackles topics and presents attitudes which are controversial in literature for adolescents. Kimberley Reynolds cites him as an author whose work demonstrates that “writing about sex, sexuality and relationships between the sexes [is] one of the most radically changed areas...

Whilst many children do not "look like" their birth parents, cross-culturally adopted children are often forced to address this topic within a social context that pathologizes lack of physical resemblance as though it signals a lack of community. A challenge for children's book authors is to address the complex emotions that arise from adoption wit...