Growing Sideways in Twenty-first Century British Culture

Malewski, Anne

doi:10.1075/clcc.11

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 63 publications

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“…Other ways to disrupt normative timelines include shifting focus onto depictions of, e.g., anachronisms, non-maturation, and no future (Edelman, 2004;Halberstam, 2005;Freeman, 2010). Queer temporal literary studies make us aware that bodies age in various ways and that norms concerning maturation and development vary across time and space (Stockton, 2009;Pugh, 2011;Joosen, 2018;Malewski, 2021). Within children's literature studies, Kathryn Bond Stockton (2009) has coined the concept growing sideways in order to capture such non-normative timelines when growing up queer.…”

Section: Time Temporal Normativity and Infant Temporalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival Kits for Babies: Baby Box Books and Infant Temporality in Finnish Maternity Packages

Lassén-Seger,

Österlund

2023

Child Lit Educ

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Maternity packages, introduced in 1938 by the Finnish state to counteract declining birth rates and infant mortality, have reached all newborns regardless of income or social status from 1949 onwards. The box is a unique phenomenon internationally and a significant part of the Finnish history of childhood as its contents mirror contemporaneous views on childhood. In 1982, a baby book was added to the box. Research has, however, kept focusing on the social aspects of the box, ignoring the baby books. In this article, we make up for the lack of scholarly interest in the baby box books by studying how they depict temporal normativity. Drawing on queer temporal studies (Halberstam 2005; Freeman 2010), we introduce the terms infant temporality/ baby time to discuss the interplay of aesthetics and normative timelines. We claim that these books use bodily tempo, rhythm, movement, as well as sensory and tactile aspects to depict non-normative timelines, understood as infant temporality. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa (2019), we argue that the interplay between adult caregiver and infant encouraged by these books aims to achieve resonance, understood as presence and connection. In contrast to adult acceleration, we claim that these books, as part of their unique hybrid aesthetics, present infant temporality as deceleration. Reaching a vast number of Finnish families yearly, the baby box books provide a strong temporal discourse while promoting a resonant reproductive time. However, we find that while the books studied deviate from adult temporal normativity, infant temporality is still included in a normative reproductive timeline, sanctioned by the Finnish state. Hereby, the baby box books expose temporal complexities of our era.

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Section: Time Temporal Normativity and Infant Temporalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival Kits for Babies: Baby Box Books and Infant Temporality in Finnish Maternity Packages

Lassén-Seger,

Österlund

2023

Child Lit Educ

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Queer Theory and Narrating Age Outside the Norm of (Re-)Productive Adulthood

Hess,

Ullmann

2024

The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging

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The Silver Sword and the New Windmill Series: The Legacy of Ian and Anne Serraillier

West

2022

Child Lit Educ

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Ian Serraillier is best remembered for his children’s book, The Silver Sword, first published in 1956. However, along with his wife Anne, he was also instrumental in creating The New Windmill Series, an imprint of Heinemann Educational Books, and one of the first collections of teenage fiction aimed for the education market. This article discusses the way in which Serraillier’s ideological beliefs, rooted in his Quaker faith, can be traced not only through his nuanced depiction of children displaced by war in The Silver Sword, but also in his objectives for the New Windmill list. It explores the Serrailliers’ progressive approach to the provision of reading material for young people moving towards adulthood, and their early understanding of the need to broach the contested and complex boundaries between children’s and adults’ fiction. The New Windmill Series was created in 1949 and the Serrailliers remained the list’s editors and driving force for over thirty years, throughout a period of great sociological and political change. Both The Silver Sword and the books selected for The New Windmill list reflect the way in which attitudes towards the sharing of difficult truths and challenging ideas with this audience changed for ever during this time, due in no small part to the work of visionary authors and editors such as the Serrailliers.

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Growing Sideways in Twenty-first Century British Culture

Cited by 7 publications

References 63 publications

Survival Kits for Babies: Baby Box Books and Infant Temporality in Finnish Maternity Packages

Survival Kits for Babies: Baby Box Books and Infant Temporality in Finnish Maternity Packages

Queer Theory and Narrating Age Outside the Norm of (Re-)Productive Adulthood

The Silver Sword and the New Windmill Series: The Legacy of Ian and Anne Serraillier

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