Description
Children’s Literature in the Forest: Experiencing the Forest in Books and in the Woods of HelsinkiLiterature has often portrayed the forest as a place for the unpredictable as well as a cradle of peace and beauty, nowadays threatened by humankind, or as a reflection of the human being and a state of her mind. In Finnish and Nordic children’s literature, the depiction of the forest and its creatures, both fictional and real, has a long and still vibrant tradition. In many books and illustrations, nature also seems to have a value in itself. Moreover, the forest is also a place in which stories and illustrations come into being. In my presentation, I will describe the process of ‘seeing’ both the forest and the stories about it in a new way, when reading and experiencing them with university students in the real woods of southern Finland. In teaching literature in the forest, the sources of a multilingual picture book service offer possibilities to share these kinds of experiences with a variety of readers and to prepare oneself in advance: to read and listen the books before entering the space that always lives according to its own terms, in sunshine, snow and rain.
(Sirke Happonen, associate professor and author, expert on Tove Jansson, children’s literature and drama; University of Helsinki, Finland)
| Period | 2 Feb 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Global ILT Education Conference: Reading in Early Childhood |
| Event type | Conference |
| Degree of Recognition | International |