Analyzing the Concept of Empowerment in Selected Persian, English and French Picturebooks in White Ravens List in 2015

Introuction:

The International Youth Library in Munich in the world’s largest library which holds more than 600000 books in the field of Children’s Literature. In 1949, Jella Lepman founded this library and since then it has managed to promulgate and empower Children’s Literature throughout the world (Lepman, 2002). Every year, lots of publishers and writers around the world send their works to the library to participate in White Ravens' big challenge. The library publishes White Ravens List every year in fifty languages and it includes works like, poetry, novels, picturebooks, and fictions. This list is published based on languages and is arranged alphabetically and for each selected book, there comes an abstract and keywords in English. Being chosen in this list would make publishers and writers known worldwide and furthermore, there are lots of researchers who use these books in their research. Thereby, in this paper, I have studied the concept of empowerment in picturebooks in 2015’s list and in order to make the matter clear, I’ve provided the analysis of three picturebooks from three languages. Having submitted a short overview of empowerment in Children’s Literature and its model, I have brought the degree of empowerment in all the picturebooks selected on the list, in a chart. Afterwards, I have focused on three picturebooks from three languages as examples.
Review of Literature.

I believe that employing empowerment in works written for children and young adults is of essential importance. Children, youth and adults are all members of the society and their empowerment equals the empowerment of the society. This idea alludes to Marah Gubar’s (2013) ‘kinship model’ where she takes children and adults as related and very close to one another. Accordingly the impossibility of Children’s Literature, adults’ power and imperialism in Children’s literature become diluted. Because by diminishing or reducing the difference between children and adults, Children’s Literature writers and mediators can create empowering works to have a share in their empowerment process. This is the main idea behind empowerment in Children’s Literature, in my opinion.  I came across the empowerment theory in sociology while I was working on my MA thesis. Elisheva Sadan (2004) proposes the theory of empowerment for the marginalized people in a society. By getting some ideas from Sadan and adapting them to Children’s Literature, getting some scattered ideas of empowerment from Children’s Literature scholarship, and other empowering concepts, I came upon a model for empowerment in YA fiction in my PhD dissertation. Finally, in order to reduce the overlaps, I used Benjamin Blume’s (1956) categories for improvement of educational goals. Hence, the final model divides empowerment in three categories of affective, cognitive, and psychomotor (Farnia, 2017).

Altogether there are twenty picturebooks in White Ravens list 2015 in three languages (English, French and Perian). After analyzing these twenty books, I have put them in a chart based on their estimated degree of empowerment: excellent, good, fair and poor. Hereby, from among the four Persian picturebooks, three are considered as fair and one as poor; among the ten English books, two are excellent, five, good and two are fair, and finally among the six French picturebooks, one is excellent, three, good and two are fair. Here, in order to illustrate the matter, I’ve chosen three samples from excellent, good and poor examples.   Use Your Imagination, but be Careful what you Wish for! (2015) written and illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne is the English sample. In affective aspect, we see artistic and psychological empowerments. Paratext and intertextuality are rich and creative and are put in artistic empowerment. The optimistic attitude and the happy-ending are psychological empowerment here, as they promulgate a positive ideology. Suspense, unfinished sentences, and foreshadowing intrigue readers affectively. In cognitive aspect, we have psychological empowerment and especially critical thinking, ‘oscillation between centration and decentration’ (Khosronejad 1383Š/2005, 1390Š/2011), gaps, and interpretive illustrations and paratext. Parody, story writing, and some literary elements are put in literary empowerment. In linguistic empowerment we have critical reading, language learning and finally in philosophical empowerment, we have the playful exchange of reality and imagination.The French sample is Tu grimpes drôlement bien aux arbres! (2015) written by Silvia Härri and illustrated by Cristina Pieropan. In affective section, we deal with psycho-philosophical empowerment, in which we see the ideological approach (the optimistic and pessimistic look to life), caring thinking and sympathy. The most important emotions aroused here are loneliness and homesickness. In cognitive aspect, we have psychological and literary empowerments. Similes play important roles in literary empowerment. However, ‘advocating children and youth as fictional characters and addressees’ and ‘useful themes for the addressee’ (Pictcurebook Group at SUCCLS, 1395Š/2016) here moving and loneliness are dominant techniques in psychological empowerments. Child’s emotions are significant in this book and there is no direct ethical message. Of other empowering techniques, we see ‘oscillation between centration and decentration’, gaps and closed-open ending.   The Persian sample, The Sweet Yogurt (1393Š, 2015) is written by Afsaneh Sha’bannejad and illustrated by Sahar Haghgoo. According to the textual and visual narratives and also the theme it seems that this picturebooks has few positive or empowering messages for its implied readers and it might as well lead them to disempowerment. 

By comparing these three picturebooks from empowerment point of view, it seems that the English one makes good use of artistic empowerment and overall, this book is marked as ‘excellent’. The French book has made a good use of a practical theme, and interpretive illustrations and so is taken as ‘good’. However, narrative and illustrations in the Persian sample seem to be cursory and it might even lead to disempowerment. Whatever it be, the main aim of this paper was to study empowerment in 2015’s White Ravens List and put emphasis on the significance of empowerment in Children’s Literature.