Open AccessYoung Voices from the Field and Home Front: World War II as Depicted in Contemporary Children’s Literature
Author(s) -
W. B. Stephens
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
children and libraries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2374-7641
pISSN - 1542-9806
DOI - 10.5860/cal.15.3.28
Subject(s) - nazism , refugee , world war ii , peasant , theme (computing) , hero , front (military) , sociology , gender studies , history , political science , literature , art , law , politics , geography , meteorology , computer science , operating system
Promoting support for Allied Forces was a central theme of contemporary children’s literature in the eve of and during World War II; the body of work captures a surprisingly complex and conflicted view of armed conflict and nationhood.Amid the expected imperatives that American children scavenge scrap metal for war bonds and cozy stories of English children evacuated to safety in North America, there is nostalgia for pastoral Russia and an unabashed celebration of the Soviet collective effort. In one of the most charged depictions, a pair of dachshunds forced to wear Nazi uniforms outwit their master. An Austrian refugee, the creation of a refugee writer, pointedly informs a naïve French peasant boy: “There are a great many Germans who hated the Nazis, didn’t you know that?”1 before revealing his father was a prisoner at Dachau.