Therapeutic Writing Strategies in Contemporary Ukrainian Children’s Books about War and Refugee Experience1

Efimova, Svetlana (2024): Therapeutic Writing Strategies in Contemporary Ukrainian Children’s Books about War and Refugee Experience1. In: Filoteknos, Bd. 14: S. 93-108

Abstract

In contemporary Ukraine, many children’s authors see it as a conscious goal of their books to help distressed and traumatized readers cope with war and refugee experience. Their intentions are documented in various paratexts. This article refers to creative strategies aimed at potential therapeutic effects on young readers as therapeutic writing strategies. It analyzes nine war-themed Ukrainian picturebooks for preschool- and elementary-school-age children, published after the outbreak of the Donbas war (2014) and especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The focus is on the visual representation of emotions, activity elements, and fairy tale structures. Drawing on cognitive literary criticism and studies of emotions in children’s literature, the analysis identifies verbal and visual strategies for encouraging and pre-structuring personal storytelling. Therapeutic writing strategies in contemporary Ukraine represent a new paradigm of engaged children’s literature, which responds to an acute social need to protect the mental health of the young generation in wartime.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Keywords: picturebooks; emotions; activity; fairy tale; Ukraine; war
• Fakultät: Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften > Department 2 > Slavische Philologie
• Themengebiete: 800 Literatur > 890 Andere Literaturen
• ISSN: 2082-9310
• Sprache: Englisch