Author:

Keywords:

children's literature, First World War, image, function

Abstract:

This article gives an overview of Flemish children’s books on World War I published between 1973 and 2014. It is based on a text analysis, focussing on the informative, divertive, emotional and moral functions. Information is in¬herent to the genre: the author takes the readers back into a period they are not familiar with. However, in order to keep the readers captivated, authors deploy the divertive function, with humour and suspense as the most important seducers. The analysis reveals how suspense is worked out in the stories. Dealing with the emotional function, the study identifies which means the authors use to enhance the chances of possible identification and empathy. Referring to the moral function, I studied the war ‘image’ or ‘frame’ constructed by the novels, analysing the selection of facts, the characters’ attitudes and linguistic markers or framing devices that reveal the author’s attitude or commitment to the topics dealt with in the text. In the conclusion constants and evolutions in the complex of functions are interpreted by situating them in a social-cultural context.