Planter i skandinavisk barne- og ungdomslitteratur

In this chapter Beatrice G. Reed examines the representation of plants in 57 award-winning Scandinavian picture books published between 2000 and 2021, using a plant-oriented quantitative analysis. The aim is twofold. First, the survey seeks to estimate what types and species of plants appear to dominate. Second, it aims to uncover the most frequent strategies used to represent plants. The most important findings in the study are discussed and nuanced through examples from the material at the end of the chapter.

In this chapter, Lykke Guanio-Uluru develops a first survey of Scandinavian climate fiction novels for young adults (YA) for the period 2022–2022. The second part of the chapter analyses the role played by plants in the representation of climate change causes and effects in six of the YA novels mapped in the survey. The novels selected for analysis are the oldest and the most recent from each of the three Scandinavian countries – Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Comparing the six novels, Guanio-Uluru, in a summarizing discussion, touches on the affective dimensions of the literary texts, which may influence the attitude to climate change adopted by young readers.

The chapter discusses a selection of Scandinavian non-fiction books for children and young people published between 2000 and 2020. What these books have in common is that they convey knowledge about various trees that children can observe and experience in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, respectively. The material consists of a total of six books, two from each of the Scandinavian countries. Using analysis tools from both non-fiction theory and critical plant studies, Goga examines how the verbal and visual text justifies the need for knowledge about trees and how knowledge about the different tree species is conveyed through verbal and visual strategies and through various forms of cultural-historical activation.

In this chapter Beatrice G. Reed examines humanoid flowers and flowerlike humans in five canonized and critically acclaimed Scandinavian picture books with verse: The Princes’ Flower Alphabet (1893), The Flower Book (1905), Little Parsley (1961), Maja’s Alphabet (1984) and Ten Small Flowers (2020). Examining how the floral and human spheres are connected through text and images, the chapter seeks to shed light on the eco- and plant critical potential of the motif.

The chapter focuses on Svein Nyhus’ picture books published between 1998 and 2021, with regard to the role of the visual and verbal depiction of trees in the bodily and cognitive approach to the world that characterizes picture books. The chapter consists of both a mapping and a close reading of selected spreads that exemplify what Goga refers to as five overarching clusters of motifs. The analysis particularly emphasizes the spreads where children and trees interact and become part of each other’s lifeworld.

In this chapter, Lykke Guanio-Uluru analyses how the greenhouse and the seed vault, two spaces central to Maja Lunde’s cli-fi The Dream of a Tree (), function rhetorically in Lunde’s novel. In the novel, both these green spaces reflect tropes tied to what Jane Suzanne Carroll (2011) terms the green topos, and both spaces emerge as places of teaching and learning about plants for the novel’s young adult protagonist, Tommy. While the seed vault links Lunde’s cli-fi to the global perspectives of climate change, the greenhouse is significant for the protagonist’s local survival on the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard that is the novel’s setting. Both topoi are central to the novel’s thematizing of the relationship between people and plants.