In the 1990s, autobiographies of childhood were one of the most importantpublishing trends. These autobiographies challenge the Romantic notionof childhood, thus contributing to the contemporary societal debate aboutchildren and childhood in crisis. Taking into consideration that ideas aboutchildren and childhood are at the heart of children’s literature, it is remarkable that autobiographies of childhood for young readers go unnoticed in the discussion.
This article examines the approach to God and religion in contemporary Dutch children's novels. It is argued that their representation has changed completely when compared to the Protestant children's books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Analysis of texts by Sjoerd Kuyper and Guus Kuijer, two of the best-known Dutch authors of children's books in which religion is important to the plot, shows at least two important differences. While earlier Protestant writers were only interested in religious instruction written from one particular stance, these two writers focus on dialogue, respectfully discussing religious issues. Looking at them from Ingarden's perspective on literature the conclusion is that the contemporary texts no longer simplify the complexities of life, thus showing the metaphysical qualities Ingarden considered essential to literature.
Picturebook art fantasies about the life and work of famous artists are usually studied from an art education perspective, but they are also interesting from the point of view of life writing, because of their hybridity on three levels: the combination of fact and fiction, the synergy between text and images and their attractiveness for both child and adult readers. In this article two picturebooks are examined on this threefold hybridity, one about Wassily Kandinsky and one about Piet Mondrian. Both books are part of a series of picturebooks, initiated by the Municipal Museum in The Hague and Dutch children’s book publisher Leopold. It is argued that the postmodern experimentation with the form which is characteristic of life narratives for adults, can also be observed in children’s literature. The biographies of Kandinsky and Mondrian make use of novelistic techniques and the interplay between words and images to tell about the life and work of these two visual artists. The many allusions in text and images to the art and the poetics of the two painters show that these picturebooks are a challenging form of life writing for both adults and children.
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