Although advances in
technology persistently challenge our understanding of texts and literacy in contemporary life, we continue to expect books to be the
main source of children’s reading and many of the books children
read contain representations of children and young people reading
books. With a grant from the British Academy, Evelyn Arizpe and
Vivienne Smith set up a series of workshops to explore the multiple
images –textual and visual- of children as readers within
children’s literature in English. They invited a group of experts
–children’s literature scholars, literacy specialists,
sociologists, editors and others working in publishing and media- to
join them in this exploration. Throughout four workshops, the group
has engaged in a process of interdisciplinary enquiry and dialogue
and considered issues around how, what and why children are shown to
read; how this has changed over time and how these images match the
child reader in the real world. They have also looked at how the book
has been represented (for example, as a source of knowledge, power or
emancipation). The papers will be presented at a conference in
October 2013 in the University of Glasgow (more information about
this event will be posted on this blog soon) and will be published in
different forms in 2014.
