Tutorial notes and what to do from here

Look into:

• Phoenix comics 
• Flying eye books
• Perrault
• Brothers grimn
• common denominators with villains 
• exquisite corpse - good practical idea as I could do top ten villains as a mix and match
• primary source? speak to librarians? 

To do:

• Practical sketches and plan for next thursday 
• Email Teresa with by the 10th with my 3,000 to 4,000 words or draft of chapter 1 and 2 

Timing stress/chapter 1 structure

I've had a bit of a stress this week as I've felt like Ive got no time and even with going to atlas three times this week I've not made enough progress to start my draft. From this stress I started my chapter 1 structure on the buses to and fro from my dentist appointment.

• Fairytales at the start of the essay
• quote about the origin of all children's literature pg 25
• articles about fairy tales 
• article about fairytales and nazis 
• quote about rehashing fairytales pg 26 - segue 
• Enid Blyton - old stories for a new audience pg 41
• A.J.P Taylor a mixture of escapism and wish fulfilment pg 43
• Tolkien segue? escapism (world building) but with strong ties to reality and obvious message / use of religion (as opposed to Enid Blyton)
• Quote about how LOFTR drew on memories of 1ww but was also influenced by the 2ww (mention of working class being more prominent post 1ww) (segue between escapism and reality)
• Atomic fiction here? mention of how there are ties between mt. doom and atomic warfare
• segue into W.E. johns and Biggles use joint quote with Tolkien about memories of 1ww pg5
• leads to feminist character mention pg 6
• say about while some made whole worlds different from our own and the situation we were in, others had either an existing series of books or comics what already existed in our reality that had little choice but to show the war. these were able to to talk more blatantly about the current mood and mindset of the time.
• brave activist quote pg 7
• Johns uses Biggles as his political voice pg 91 (also mention about child characters were also able to do this as they could speak in that honest blunt way that children do)
• use of unpleasant characters to denounce unsavoury traits pg 50 
• Biggles drew attention to things "polite" middle class children shouldn't know about pg 88
• isolationism was the zeitgeist pg 14 when not it was very inter nation (friendly to our allies) pg 20   inclusive and start of better diversity pg 22-25 ( include here or after Biggles? will tie in well with contemporary) 
• Biggles was translated into Norwegian  and Swedish which may explain why he wrote about the finish war pg 60 despite never going there (which led to the location seeming less real than usual) 
• Johns made it clear that there was nothing phoney about the Finish war pg 60 
• segue into Fin. war being the root of the moomins and loop back to escapism, world building, religion and root in folklore 
• how conflict isn't always literal fighting
• link Tove's feminism with feminist pilot mentioned earlier. also sexism
• Thingummy & bob - lesbian 
• Look through life art words for more details

Mrs Athas

I've mentioned this coffee shop before but I'd just like to say about how I've got into a pretty good system there lately. I'll go there and read my big book writing quotes & notes until my brain can't absorb any more, then I'll do a bit of my 603 that relates to there until I can get back into my quotes & notes. I've done this three times this week and I think it's the way forward for me as I can't focus either at home or in the studio but at Athas I have to be doing it or I've got nothing to do.

Articles I have found

I've been collecting all the interesting articles/books/journals I've been finding in my bookmarks. After a friend told me about an article on the guardian that could be relevant I've found 13 new articles of various use. Some of them directly useful and some of them that just have the odd good quote. 

Visual villains and conflict

Follow Rosie's board villains on Pinterest. I've been thinking that perhaps I should limit myself some how, maybe to one book series or one theme? I'd really like to do his dark materials or harry potter or a series of unfortunate events I think. I also had a thought about maybe doing a zine bout several different types of villains with what their daemons from his dark materials would look like.but I'm really not quite sure yet. This post is supposed to have a widget which shows what I've been looking at on pinterest but it doesn't seem to want to work, If you click on the link it'll take you over to my board that has them on.

It Arrived!

The book about children's fiction in the second world war has arrived in the library and I have started to read it. Unfortunately I definitely won't have time to finish it before I'm supposed to have a first draft of chapter one in. Oh well, I'll start anyway.

Where I am and What I need to do

Notes:

• My title is still a little broad
• Who is the audience? e.g. How old are the children?
• It seems to be World building that I'm interested in
• the things kids don't quite understand (eg. depression in books) causes questions to be asked and raises awareness - just like words and vocabulary 
• I need to find and read more journals
• I should email the book trust about books with conflict in
• I should look on good reads for books
• I should speak to Liberians 
• I should look for some bloggers
• kids love to be scared - find Neil Gaiman quote
• The rules of hope in kids books, eg. the kid has to survive the book, safe in the end or are capable of defending themselves 

Recommended reads:

• The rabbits - colonisation (picture book)
• The horn book
• Leviathan - steam punk, alt. WWI
• His dark materials 
• The graveyard book 

Practical:

• Try to bring conflict in
• In storm kissed she argues with her mum - something like that?
• Visual metaphors? depression etc.?
• strong emotions?

Task for two weeks time:

• Key images
• draft of first chapter = WWII chapter

What and How task

I will research into how conflict is shown in children's fiction and what affect it has. I became interested in this after reading Tove Jansson's official biography (Life, Art, Words), and I realised that I was much more interested in how reality bleeds through into children's books and how big, difficult, concepts are presented to children. As no matter how much we pretend to be children too, we are still grown ups with grown up concepts that are a little forgien to kids. It will hopefully contribute to my practice by teaching me something about writing children's books and furthering my knowledge of how to create fantasy worlds.

I'm going to read a wide range of children's books, academic books and journals. I'm going to use qualitative methods to interpret the text and use data to infer and compare the use of imagery and symbolism to reference conflict to a children's demographic. my hypothesis for this will be that more contemporary children's fiction uses less symbolism and imagery than previous incarnations that would somewhat protect the innocence of youth as we now have a more fragmented society. I'll accomplish my goal of writing this dissertation by dedicating at least one day a week to cop3 and continuing to read  informative texts. My practical will be something I'll need help or advice on as currently I only have the idea of creating a series of children's book characters.

New, new title

After my last tutorial I was a bit lost as Teresa said about how I needed more contemporary work in my dissertation and suggested the word conflict up. From there I've played around a bit and sort of settled on 'How the reality of conflict is presented in children's fiction and what affect it has'. However I'm mainly interested in how it is shown in fantasy as it has to be a little warped to live in the fantasy setting and isn't so obvious. I'm also really interested how we present difficult concepts to children.

Summary

How reality affects fiction, with a particular focus on Children's fiction in the Second World War.

At the start of the summer I had a different idea about what I was going to do for my essay and started my research based on that.

My question was about how growing up in a creative household affects the creative, with a particular focus on Tove Jansson’s Sculptors daughter. As the title suggests I stared my research by reading Sculptor’s daughter and making illustrations based of the book. The book itself is a part biography part fiction of her own childhood, viewed through the eyes and mindset of the child. I wasted a lot of my time by enjoying making images over starting to read a proper biography and when I did get round to reading one I began to change my mind on what I wanted to write about. After reading Tove Jansson Life, Art, words I wrote a big mess of a list about what it was that actually interested me and what it was that I wanted to write about. I realized that I was most interested in seeing how Tove’s life appeared in her works and about the subtle appearances of war in moominland compared to the not so subtle of C.S Lewis say.

Questions/Topics:

How the author’s/artists life appears in the story

How religion appears

How war is shown in a fantastical setting

How difficult/intangible concepts are presented to children

The differences between a subtle idea and an obvious one

Has this affected children?

How has children’s fiction been affected by war?

Books to read/Authors to look at:

Boys and Girls Forever – children’s tales from Cinderella to Harry Potter

World War II As Seen Through Children's Literature by 
Laura Pringleton (essay)

British Children's Fiction in the Second World War (Societies at War) by Owen Dudley Edwards – need to get my hands on a copy

Tolkein

C.S. Lewis

Judith Kerr

Tove Jansson

New topic Ideas

This is a list of what it is I'm actually interested in and where I could take it, I think I'm going with 'How reality affects fantasy, with a particular focus on world war 2 in children's fiction'. I've chosen this because it is the core of what I found most interesting while still having a historical focus that'll give me a direction to do my research and will have lots of academic sources.