Babes in the Wood: Picturing Displaced Children

  • Kathryn E. Shoemaker University of British Columbia

Abstract

From the earliest told tales to the modern picture book, through fact and fiction, storytellers have searched for meaning in the hardships and calamities that befall children: children disappear; they die; they are kidnapped, victimized by war, family strife, economic hardships, political turmoil and by natural disasters. Until illustration was added to the printed story images of displaced children remained in the filtered imaginations of listeners and readers. Printed illustration particularizes images related to a text, infusing a story with yet another specific point of view. This point of view is related to, though different from, the writer's and the viewer/reader's perspective. This article discusses some visual strategies of viewer distance used in picturing fiction and nonfiction stories about displaced children.

Author Biography

Kathryn E. Shoemaker, University of British Columbia
Kavid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
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