Research into the role of literature in the Nordic classroom has shown that literary texts are predominantly seen as a tool for the developing of literacy skills and often focus on the structural components of the text itself. This often leads to the equally important creative and playful aspects being sidelined. Addressing this imbalance, the present article argues in favour of creating opportunities for young learners to take more agency and promote creative dialogue and playful expression in classroom reading practicesthrough the framework of playworld (Swedish: lekvärlden) (Lindqvist, 1992, 1996). Specifically, this article attempts to answer the following questions: (1) how can oral and written interaction based on the reading of a children’s book be understood in terms of playworld; and (2) in what ways can the concept of playworld enrich the understanding of students’ and teachers' engagement with children’s books? The findings are based on a classroom study of a Swedish Grade 4 students, focusing on discussions and activities related to the reading aloud of Wegelius’s The Legend of Sally Jones. The results of this study have enabled us to shift from the dominant focus on individual readers and readings to the dialogic interplay in playworld between the children and the adult / teachers who creatively reworked and expanded upon the text. The concept of playworldis employed as a tool to empower both teachers’ and students’ creative engagement with literary texts in a way that builds on a collective imagination.

As traditional musical accompaniment to children's play in Java, tembang dolanan —an assemblage of Javanese children's songs— has only been studied for their didactic values (e.g. Nugrahani, 2012) and capacity to preserve local wisdom (e.g. Sari et al., 2020) as well as character building (e.g. Dhalu et al., 2020). This reflects the lack of childism (Deszcz-Tryhubczak & Garcia Gonzales, 2022) in examining tembang dolanan, consequently disregarding the assemblage's intrinsic playful qualities —qualities closely associated with children. This paper aims to reinstate the childism paradigm in the study of tembang dolanan by focusing and scrutinizing the elements of play within the said musical assemblage. The concept of play, in this study, is analyzed through the close reading of the poetic elements, such as word choices, images, sounds, and the use of nonsense in the lyrics. Focus on the collaborative creation of play sphere through the sobg is also employed in the study, mainly through the framework of playworld (You & Malilang, 2017).  

The common depiction of LGBTIQA+ identity in manga generally revolves around gendered fantasy, either from female gaze on forbidden love in yaoi genre or the gay gaze on masculinity in bara genre. As such, the publication of Gengoroh Tagame’s graphic novel, “My Brother’s Husband”, is considered a breath of fresh air in terms of authentic representation within the manga sphere. The book itself revolves around the journey of Yaichi, Mike, and Kana in exploring and accepting / tolerating new, sometimes alien concepts of sexuality and identity within the setting of intercultural encounters. Despite the dynamic interactions between these three characters, the child (Kana) plays an important role in sparking, facilitating, and sometimes leading the dialogues that further explore the complexity of sexuality and identity from both Canadian and Japanese perspectives. This paper aims to study how the child agency and activism is portrayed and used in this book to help both the child and adult readers to navigate the complex issues, such as interculturality, identity, and sexuality. The rise of Kana into an active citizen and how she claims her own space in the public sphere and debates of sexuality and identity become the focus of this study. The child mediation, agency and activism in the book are analysed using the framework of intergenerational solidarity and the idea of “child-as-kin”. Focus on the visuality and image seriality is also employed in the study, considering the importance of visual layers in the graphic novels in telling story, the potential to further engage the readers and build the affective foundation to finally embrace diversity. 

The levels of pleasure of reading amongst children in countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway have been subject to concern. Initiatives to improve these levels and projects to understand the conditions for how best to do this have been carried out (Støle, Hanse Wagner & Schwippert, 2020; Hansen et al., 2017). This is done because these societies recognize the negative impact this situation could have for child literacy in the future. One such initiative that has been proposed in Denmark to counter a decline in levels of pleasure of reading amongst children is based on Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). With its origins in art studies, VTS fits well with the multimodal nature of picturebooks and the current metacognitive approach to multimodal reading (Sundmark, 2018). The recent Covid-19 pandemic and the dawn of emergency remote teaching unlocked new opportunities and has provided the seeds for new ways to facilitate reading for both teachers and their students. Through its anchoring in visual literacy, VTS has great potential in an online learning environment. This presentation argues for how VTS can scaffold and support children’s literacy through picturebooks and foster their enthusiasm for literature in the online environment.

In this contribution, we explore something rarely reported on in research on children’s literature: how an old children’s book is re-appropriated and altered in ongoing teaching practice. The material consists of the book used in instruction, a Swedish translation of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (Tant Mittiprick), and transcribed audio recordings collected throughout six weeks of teaching. Participants include a librarian, who conducted the lion’s share of the discussions based on the books, two teachers, and two groups of Grade 3 students. The analysis is conducted based on Langer’s theory of building literary envisionments and the concept of the “third space”. The findings show that the students’ initial reception of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, playfully articulated in the classroom discussions, is shaped by literary stereotypes of old women and connections to everyday experiences. This reception is partly acknowledged by the adults. Thus, this shows the potential of the meaning making process through join negotiation of the third space—connecting prior knowledge and experience to the book. However, the librarian’s evaluations of student responses reinforce a particular didactic reading of the character as someone firm and knowledgeable, playing down the whimsical and silly characteristics of the protagonist. In reading the book aloud, the librarian made significant alterations to the text. With respect to literary language, the librarian provided numerous paraphrases and elaborations which served to support the students in making meaning of the book. More drastic alterations of the text served to avoid reinforcing outdated values, for example antiquated gender roles and references to physical punishment. While the paraphrases of literary terms created opportunities for negotiating the third space and learning about literary language, the sanitised reading of the book with respect to values failed to capitalise on opportunities for contextualising the book and making intertextual connections.

For some creative writers, the concept of autonomy is obtained early in the beginning of their learning process – through playing with words and imageries in their own mind. Some others, however, requires the support or even explicit instructions to facilitate their learning. Unfortunately, the general paradigm of creative writing in education is still dominated by the first perspective, rendering the subject as ‘unteachable’. Instructed creative writing thus suffers from a stigma of ‘dry, template-based writing’. Drawing upon the author’s autoethnographic research of becoming a creative writer through a cross-cultural community of practice in creative writing, this presentation aims to prove that instructed creative writing can be effective in achieving the autonomy. The old Javanese learning concept within arts, nyantrik, is used and modified alongside Lave & Wenger’s community of practice in this research. Through the use of reflective approach on the said immersion process, elements that lead and mark the progression to become autonomous writers are identified. These elements, such as deautomatization through translation, metaphors, style, and voices, are presented as potential seeds for further developing teaching methods for creative writing in a classroom / institutional context. 

Departing from the premise of ‘death of the author’, this contribution aims to study children’s active participation in the reconstruction and re-appropriation of old and arguably outdated children’s book from 1940’s. The study centered around forty Year 3 students in Southern Sweden who read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a book first published in 1947, together with their teachers and a librarian. In a process resembling Gunilla Lindqvist’s “Playworld”, both children and adults work together to create a more modern iteration of the book. While the librarian provided numerous paraphrases and elaboration to facilitate students’ meaning making of the book, the students were also encouraged to contribute with their own personal experience and intertextual references from their surroundings. This join negotiation resulted in a collective repository from which the students could draw upon in their reimagination of the book through writing letters to the main protagonist. The result of the analysis also highlights how the reading aloud of the book resulted in a sanitized version, which respect to for example representation of gender, which diminished the potentials for a critical and contextual understanding of the book. Implications for engaging children in the reading of older books in ways which treats them as readers and makers in their own right are discussed.  

The teaching of reading in many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms setting usually are focused more on asking the students to identify the features of the reading texts such as the plot, the main characters, and the main idea of the story. EFL readers are rarely introduced with reading activities  where they can establish emotional connection with the story that they read. The two-week Virtual Book Club (VBC) between students at the English Department in Malmo University and 25 students at the English Department in Sanata Dharma University was established to explore the students’ interculturality when reading a story about sadness. This descriptive research investigates the following: how do the students create meaning of sadness based on the children’s book entitled A Sad Book viewed from Hoff’s (2016) interculturality theory’s 3 levels of communication? During the VBC, each group was given 3 questions which were based on Hoff’s 2 out of 3 levels of intercultural communication; The first question was aimed to trigger the students’ immediate emotional response (Level 1); the second question triggers the students’ multiple interpretations (Level 2); the third question triggers the students to refer to the lessons learned (Level 1 and Level 2). The main data source were the students’ written reflections, the group discussion scripts and interview results. The research results indicated that: (1) all students showed their immediate responses towards sadness by directly sharing their feelings towards the story and how the story triggers their memories of their sad experiences (Level 1); (2) all students gave their different interpretations of sadness in accordance to their cultural backgrounds (Level 2) in which it provided a very rich concept of sadness. Implications of the research for the teaching of reading in the EFL context is discussed.

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) were originally conceived to be applied in Art Museums, and indeed in education, VTS is traditionally linked with teaching activities through Art studies. There is, however, a growing interest in directly applying this method in other areas and language teaching is foremost among them. This is further facilitated by the shifts in the concept of reading during the last several decades where images are included alongside written text. At the time of writing, the global CoVid-19 emergency has pushed teaching at all levels into the virtual classroom and there is a growing urgency to embrace less verbal communication and more visual facilitation in this online teaching environment. But this emergency teaching is opening up new opportunities in the context of blended learning in the post-CoVid-19 crisis world and providing the seeds for future teaching methods and flexibility for both students and teachers. VTS which has shown proven efficiency in in-person teaching has also, through its anchoring in visual literacy, great potential in an online learning environment. This presentation will argue how VTS can scaffold language learning in the online environment. 

This article shall argue that learning arts (creative writing) and becoming an artist is best understood as a process of immersion. Lave and Wenger’s Community of Practice will be used as a framework along with the concept of nyantrik, an apprenticeship inarts within Javanese culture, which gives a deeper meaning to the process of immersion. This article will also show how such learning processes may be re-shaped and occur across spatial and cultural boundaries, with the help of modern communication platforms. Using a/r/tography as an approach for arts-based inquiries, the article aims to describe the dialogic learning process of becoming a creative writer through immersion into an online multicultural community of practice, Project 366. The study is accomplished through an examination of the interactions, reflections and creative works (poetry) of the participants, as well as how such exchanges also affected the researcher’s own creative process.

The current socio-political development all around the world has given a rise to the view of education as multiplicities. This new perspective calls for new approaches as opposed to the classical arborial structure of knowledge in education. Creative Writing is chosen as a case study in this paper to exemplify the rhizomatic nature of knowledge and education. As a subject, Creative writing adheres to to the principle of Deleuzian rhizome, enabling it to move in the multi-planar and multidisciplinary directions. Consequently, a specific design research that accounts for the rhizomatic principle us needed. This paper aims to present a case of a/r/tographic design research used to handle the non-linear and non-hierarchal structure in creative writing and education in general. Taking approaches to teaching, learning, and researching as ‘practice’, a/r/tography acknowledges the various multiplicities in education and allows for more spaces and openings for critical thinking by incorporating the concept of ‘praxis’ from Freirean Critical Pedagogy due to the lack of hierarchal construction.

Children’s Literature in Indonesia is generally associated with oral story-telling and folklore. With the establishment of the state-owned publisher Balai Pustaka in 1917 traditional stories started to be circulated in print, giving birth to the publication of children’s books. However, as a part of Dutch colonial policies, Balai Pustaka was instructed to favour the colonial  perspective over the style and voice of the original stories. In order to circumvent this restriction and open the stage more for silenced local literature, some policy changes were eventually deemed necessary, and traditional stories were treated with more respect  In the next stage, even translations of Western fairy tales were adapted to the local target language and culture.  This paper aims to investigate the early stage of Indonesian published children’s literature in general and the compromise made through translation / textual transformations to give voice to local cultural expressions and values. The text focused in this study is Koetjing Setiwelan, a Javanese translation of Puss in Boots published by Balai Pustaka in 1922. A comparative analysis of this translation (text and illustrations) will be conducted in order to shed light on the development of colonial Indonesia’s children’s literature, and the compromises made due to Dutch colonial publishing policies. 

Mary, Esmeralda, and Frollo: A Hermeneutic Reading of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame – The Musical”. This essay aims to analyze the multimodal storytelling involving songs in The Hunchback of Notre Dame – The Musical. Two songs, “God Helps the Outcasts” and “Hellfire”, are chosen to be analyzed hermeneutically. The primary analysis is done through the scrutiny over the juxtaposition of different musical styles in the said songs. Comparisons to Victor Hugo’s original text and the Disney animated version – in which the musical is based on – is also done to shed more light on the new layers of interpretation.

The return of Creative Writing to the academia was intended as an answer to rigidapproaches employed in the nineteenth century’s teaching of English Literature. Thiscomeback has since brought back a new perspective in seeing body of literature as aliving body but at the same time also introduced clash between dominating researchparadigm in the academia. The writers who were hired to teach creative writing tendedto prioritise their creative practice, while the general consensus in academia calledfor more theoretical-oriented research. In order to compromise, the practice-basedresearch method was born.Despite various justifications that creative process is the same as research inquiry, theheavier emphasis on creative works in this method still invites criticism, such as thelack of research rigour (Biggs & Büchler, 2007). New framework to balance and bridgepractice and research rigour is thus needed – especially one that can accommodate thenon-linear thinking trajectories in creative practices. Due to the possible non-linearity,the new research platform should not follow the reigning ‘arborescent scheme’ in theacademic research tradition, but incorporate the concept of Deleuzian rhizome.A/r/tography –developed based on the premise of art and art creation as a rhizomaticprocess/activity– is proposed as one of the potential practices for creative writing research.The non-linear view of a/r/tography towards arts practices suggests a rhizomatic role inthe mapping of creative writing process. As it addresses and accommodates multiplicities,a/r/tography also facilitates non-native English speakers to conduct and map his journeyin art creation and research inquiry. Author’s project of writing a collection of bilingualpoems based on classical Javanese song cycle –Sekar Macapat– is presented to illustratethe claim

We have seen many examples and portrayals of child governance in children’s texts explored in this book. Sometimes children rule in a fantasy world inhabited by talking animals, feeling toys, or other liminal characters. Sometimes they rule in an alternative world or a secondary universe-as Auden and Tolkien term it-run by codes and rules completely different from those of the real world. In some instances, the rules are symbolically or allegorically reminiscent of those in the real world. These spaces of children ruling take the form of self-enclosed spaces free from adults, or they may require an expulsion of parental authorities. Despite the diverse forms, these worlds-assuming and emphasizing spatial boundaries (urban/rural, public/ domestic, regional/global, and realistic/fantastic)—provide a geographical backdrop to the child ruler. With these facts as a point of departure, some questions arise: What kind of world can children create when they are away from the dominant influence of adult society? How can they freely use their potential to play with social settings and prescriptions? To what extent can a child ruler renavigate the landscape of power or reposit issues of agency with regard to children and nonhuman others?