All posts by Rebecca Long

Children in War: The Pursuit of Happiness in Three Children’s Books

by Rebecca Long, Trinity College Dublin

What is happiness? What does it mean to be happy? How is happiness achieved? Can such questions ever be answered without a context, be it emotional, social, historical or cultural? As a genre, children’s literature provides a particularly engaging and meaningful context within which to explore the concept and experience of happiness. As children are rarely in control of the means to secure their own happiness – or even to understand it – representations of happiness in texts for children are especially affective and enlightening. Ian Serrailler’s The Silver Sword (1956), Anne Holm’s I Am David (1963) and Martia Conlon McKenna’s Safe Harbour (1996) are three narratives for children that interrogate the possibility of happiness in childhoods disrupted by conflict and war.

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