This special issue explores banned books and censorship of literature for children and young adults in various contemporary and historical contexts.
Censorship of children’s literature has existed for as long as people have been writing for children in liberal democracies as well as totalitarian regimes (Erlandson et al 2020). While childhood conceptualisations have changed over time and according to different ideological, moral and religious beliefs, educators, parents, and politicians continue to agree that children are impressionable and may be influenced by the texts they encounter. Heins (2007) cites Plato’s statement in The Republic: “[a] young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become inedible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts” (in Heins 2007: 3). More than 1500 years later, Plato’s passage was cited by judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1998 in the case of a high school drama teacher who had been banned from working on a “controversial” play. The view that young people should be protected from corrupting texts, then, has existed throughout the history of children’s and young adult literature.
The topics that are seen as forbidden change according to the shifting scope of taboo, dominant social discourses, and what kind of child or adult a text addresses. For example, topics related to sexuality might be omitted from children’s dictionaries aimed at privileged children (who were conceptualized as innocent) but were included in dictionaries for poor children, who were seen as already corrupted by their environment and who might, therefore, need to be explicitly warned against sexual transgressions (Iversen 2018). Moreover, literary censorship is gendered. Even the Bible was sometimes “forbidden” for young female readers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Hunt (1997) has pointed out that censorship of children’s books is linked to adults’ power over children. However, as Grenby (2011: 251) has argued in his discussion of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century child readers, it was often the children themselves who were “the most powerful censors” in that they could choose not to read or skip certain parts in a book.
Banned and censored books are those forbidden by laws or other restrictions. During the last few years, more children's books have been banned, especially nationwide in the US but also in Scandinavia. The American Library Association has reported an increase in banned books for children in schools and public libraries. Perhaps paradoxically, given the debates criticizing “leftist Cancel Culture”, there has been a recent deluge of conservative censorship specifically targeting books about racism and sexual identity (Nell 2023). The Dawit Isaak Database of Censorship, a Swedish pilot project aiming to collect banned, censored, and challenged literature internationally, now consists of 160 titles but is in the process of applying for more funding to expand the collection. Forbidden, banned and censored children’s books include classics such as Huckleberry Finn and newer titles such as Gender Queer. In Scandinavia, Pippi Longstocking has been revised in the wake of debates about colonialism and racism, and Harry Potter has been banned from a Christian school in Sweden. Banned books and censorship, then, occur worldwide, from both ends of the political spectrum, and in different media and fora. The topic is sensitive, challenging, and provocative – today and historically.
We invite investigations of contemporary literature and/or debates, as well as historical analyses, cross-cultural and cross-language comparisons, and case studies.
Possible themes for investigation include, but are not restricted to:
- Aesthetics, themes, and motifs provoking censorship in different contexts and historically Taboo and censorship in translated, revised, or adapted children’s literature.
- The ways in which actors and gatekeepers such as librarians, teachers, parents, researchers, literary critics and readers (re)act to book banning and literary censorship for children.
- Self-censored children’s literature in various genres and mediums. Banned books, freedom of speech, and democracy.
Abstracts should be around 300 words and written in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, or English.
Working timetable
10 February 2025: Submission of abstract
February 2025: Individual response to authors of abstract
1 September 2025: Deadline for full article (30,000 characters including spaces)
October: Individual feedback from the peer reviewers
Spring 2026: Expected publication Please
submit your abstracts to:
Editors: Sarah Hoem Iversen (Western Norway University of Applied Science) and Anna Nordenstam (University of Gothenburg)
References
- Erlandson, E., Helgason, J., Henning P. and Lindsköld, (2020). Forbidden Literature.
- Case Studies on Censorship, Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
- Grenby, M. (2011). The Child Reader, 1700-1840. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge
- University Press.
- Heins, M. (2007). Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency,” Censorship, and the Innocence
- of Youth. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.
- Hunt, P. (1997). Censorship and Children’s Literature in Britain Now, Or, the Return of
- Abigail. Children’s Literature in Education, 28(2): 95-103.
- Iversen, S. H. (2018). Class, Censorship, and the Construction of the Child Reader in
- Nineteenth-Century Children's Dictionaries. Children’s Literature in Education, 51: 332-347.
- Nell, P. (2023). Why are people afraid of multicultural books?
- geschichtedergegenwart.ch/why-are-people-afraid-of-multicultural-
- childrens- books/.
- The Dawit Isaak Database of Censorship (DIDOC), https://didoc.dh.gu.se/.
(Quelle: Aussendung)