From Editors
Abstract
The second issue of the journal “Children’s literature: interdisciplinary discourse” presents studies revealing various aspects of literature for children and youth within cultural, educational, and publishing contexts.
Oksana Petrenko-Momotenko’s thorough research focuses on systematizing normative approaches to defining and classifying children’s publications in Ukraine. The author offers her own interpretation of the term “children’s publication” and analyzes the provisions of national standards (DSTU, DSanPiN, GSTU, SOU) related to publishing and printing activities in the field of children’s books. The practical dimension of the study is represented through descriptions of various Ukrainian children’s publications.
Nataliia Marchenko traces the evolution of literary-critical and scholarly reception of the work of the iconic children’s writer Vsevolod Nestayko within the domestic discourse on literature for children and youth. She rightly highlights the key stages in interpreting his legacy - from fragmentary criticism during the Soviet period to the re-examination of ideological connotations of his works and public image in the first decades of Ukraine’s independence, and finally to his establishment in the canon of contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and youth during the wartime decade.
Ecological themes and an ecocritical approach form a shared analytical field for the scholarly studies of Tetiana Kachak, Tetyana Blyznyuk, and Marharyta Kirieieva. Their analyses focus on artistic models interpreting ecological catastrophes in the dystopias MOX NOX by Tania Maliarchuk and Through the Forest. By the Sky, by the Water by Serhii Oksenyuk, as well as the story Chernobyl Wanderings of Bucha by Viktor Vasylchuk. Both articles demonstrate the potential of children’s literature to foster ecological thinking and responsible attitudes toward nature and environment among young readers.
Andrii Gurduz’s research is notable for its original analysis of the mature form of mash-up prose in the Ukrainian literary context and for illuminating the dynamics of Western subgenre transformation through the example of Oleksandr Dekan’s novella Kaidasheva Family vs Zombies.
Combining interdisciplinary perspectives from literary studies, pedagogy, and digital technologies, Tetiana and Eduard Krainikov propose an innovative approach to developing children’s communicative competence through the use of fairy tales created with artificial intelligence.
Larysa Krul’s review of the collective monograph Fieldwork in Ukrainian Children’s Literature (eds. M. Świetlicki, A. Ulanowicz) emphasizes the importance of scholarly studies on Ukrainian children’s literature within the global academic discourse. This book is noteworthy as the first systematic English-language study tracing the development of Ukrainian children’s literature and revealing its role in shaping national identity and cultural resilience amid historical challenges.
We invite scholars, educators, and experts in library science and children’s publishing interested in forming an interdisciplinary discourse on research in children’s literature, books, and reading to collaborate with us. Together we can develop new methodological approaches and strategies for analyzing literary models reflecting childhood and the contemporary world in texts for young readers.
