Abstract
This article argues that children’s books are characterized by a surprisingly intense attempt to reflect on their own mediality and materiality. Such reflections are, moreover, closely connected to considerations of the act of reading. The interest in new sensory or even corporeal modes of reading is linked to an interest in the materiality of books. In the following I propose that Walter Benjamin should be considered as one of the most interesting theoreticians when it comes to the notion of the strange reading practices of children, reading as a material event and the representation of different reading scenes in children’s books. Analysis of Benjamin’s writings is used to throw a light on Kurt Schwitters’ typographical fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales about reading and books. – The article aims to illustrate the relevance of theories of materiality for research in children’s literature. It also outlines some of the new questions that the preoccupation with children’s literature could add to the theories of materiality.
Müller-Wille, Klaus