Flightlines: exploring early readers for children about the refugee experience

Hope, Julia

doi:10.2304/forum.2007.49.3.289

Cited by 7 publications

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“…Even more controversially, several picture books about the refugee experience have appeared since the millennium from a variety of writers (Hope, 2007;Dolan, 2014). In the UK The Colour of Home by Mary Hoffman (2002), was the first picturebook to appear on the topic followed by Petar's Song by Pratima Mitchell (2004), which is deliberately oblique in its lack of geographical specificity.…”

Section: Rationale For the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Soldiers Came to the House”: Young Children’s Responses to The Colour of Home

Hope

2016

Child Lit Educ

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This article begins by reflecting on the present refugee crisis and its relevance to children in the UK. It identifies the need for teaching about the refugee experience to young children and argues that literature can provide a conduit for this. Since the millennium there has been a rapid increase in the number of books published for children which take this as their theme, aimed at ever-younger readers. Taking as a case study The Colour of Home by Mary Hoffman, a picturebook commonly used in lower primary classrooms, the article considers how this text promotes understanding and validates the circumstances of refugees. It closely examines the motivations and aims of the writer, how the book was mediated by teachers in the primary classroom, and how refugee and non-refugee children read and responded to it. Findings are presented from an interview with Mary Hoffman herself, juxtaposed with data from three classrooms suggesting that pupils gained valuable insight into a complicated and controversial issue. However the research concludes that viewing children through a refugee/non-refugee binary was reductive in not recognising the multi-layered nuances of meaning which were constructed by young readers who brought to bear a wide variety of individual life and family experiences. Furthermore, teachers in the study played a powerful role in mediating the texts when sharing them in the classroom, and devised a selection of stimulating resources to provoke reader response in terms of empathy, ''social action'', and some critical literacy. Julia Hope has been a primary school teacher with responsibility for refugee children. She now lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London on the Primary PGCE, MA in Children's Literature and BA(Ed), teaching specialist courses in children's literature on all programmes. Her research looks at responses to children's literature about refugees in the primary classroom and will be published as a book in Spring 2017 by IOE/UCL Press.

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Section: Rationale For the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Soldiers Came to the House”: Young Children’s Responses to The Colour of Home

Hope

2016

Child Lit Educ

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“…Stories specifically about child refugees have been described as a new genre in children's literature (Hope, 2007(Hope, , 2008. They are also part of a history of children's books from the 1960s onwards in the Western world, that focussed on ethnicities, multiculturalism and cultural diversity (including Dolan, 2013Dolan, , 2014Stephens, 2011;Lamme et al, 2004;Mendoza and Reese, 2001).…”

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confidence: 99%

Creating “them” and “us”

Tomsic

Deery

2019

HER

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the contemporary “refugee crisis” is being presented to children through picture books and teaching materials. It uses the concept of refugeedom as an approach that takes into account the multiple facets involved in the forced movement of people in the past and present and seeks to show the value of historical understandings in educational contexts when framing resources for teachers and students. Design/methodology/approach The paper examines a sample of high-profile English language picture books about children’s stories of forced displacement and the most prominent freely available teaching materials connected to the books. A critical discursive analysis of the books and educative guides considers the ways in which ideas and information about forced displacement is framed for child readers and children in primary school classrooms. The context for the authors’ interest in exploring these books and educational resources is that in response to the numbers of children who are part of the current “refugee crisis” alongside a public call for the “crisis” to be explained to children. Findings The paper argues that picture books open up spaces for children to explore refugeedom through experiences of forced movement and various factors involved in the contemporary “refugee crisis”. In contrast, in the teaching resources and some peritextual materials, the child in the classroom is addressed as entirely disconnected from children who are forcibly displaced, students in classrooms are positioned to learn from the refugee “other”. When links are made between students in classroom and children who have been forcibly displaced it is through activities that position students in classrooms to imagine themselves as forcibly displaced, or to suggest they act within a humanitarian framework of welcoming or helping refugees. The authors believe that if teaching resources were more directly informed by discipline specific tools of historical concepts, more nuanced approaches to past and present histories of forced movement could be considered and from that more fruitful learning opportunities created for all students. Practical implications This research provides ideas about how materials to support the use of picture books in educational settings could be developed to promote historical thinking and contextualisation around key social and political issues in the world today. It also makes the case for historians to be involved in the creation of teaching materials in a collaborative way so that academic insights can be brought to teachers and students at all levels of education. Originality/value The value of this research is to understand how children are positioned in reading and learning about forced displacement and query the impact of decontextualised approaches to learning. It argues for the critical interpretative value that historical understanding can bring to present day issues which are history in the making.

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“…Since the 1950s, it is possible to identify numerous books written for children in English, or translated and available on the UK market, which explore the refugee experience and embrace stories set in locations as far afield as Bosnia, Somalia, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, targeted at an ever-younger readership (Hope, 2007). As expected, these books reflect the waves of migration experienced by western countries in recent years, as conflicts escalate and globalisation, as well as improved travel, leads to a growing number of people claiming sanctuary in other countries.…”

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confidence: 99%

“One Day We Had to Run”: The Development of the Refugee Identity in Children’s Literature and its Function in Education

Hope

2008

Child Lit Educ

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In the last two decades there have been significant numbers of children's books written about various aspects of the refugee experience. Previously authors had tended to approach this sensitive area principally through an historical perspective. However as the number of refugees in British schools increases, books dealing with contemporary conflicts are published in greater numbers. How do children view this growing body of literature? A short ethnographic study attempts to interrogate the importance of autobiography and personal testimony in the construction of refugee identities in children's books, and the article discusses the validating role of these texts and their purpose as educative tools in our classrooms. I conclude by considering potential areas within the current curriculum for using story to highlight the situation of those for whom ''One day we had to run!''(Wilkes, One Day We Had to Run! London: Evans Bros Ltd., 1994).

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Flightlines: exploring early readers for children about the refugee experience

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

“The Soldiers Came to the House”: Young Children’s Responses to The Colour of Home

“The Soldiers Came to the House”: Young Children’s Responses to The Colour of Home

Creating “them” and “us”

“One Day We Had to Run”: The Development of the Refugee Identity in Children’s Literature and its Function in Education

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