The writer Iñaki Zubeldia has just published a paper on children's and youth literature. The theme of the children's literature on the cover of the book is title 2, so we follow up the study carried out six years ago. “It is not a treatise on children’s literature, nor is it a comprehensive and general study on this subject. There are more inroads into the field of children’s and youth literature”, explains the author. “We analyze children’s literature, the author’s office, the importance of libraries, the new ways to promote literature… and offer some reflections, interviews and critical opinions”. As Iñaki Zubeldia himself tells us, “I am not an expert in children’s literature, but one who strives, when I have seen things wrong I have explained them, always trying to make my reasons and why my vision clear and providing clear examples. I offer an out-of-line look at the children’s literature and the authors outside the consecrated – I call them ‘other authors’ –, I analyze them, in some ways, to the writers who have abandoned the official lines and ‘ignored’ in some cases.

With these objectives, Zubeldia has addressed several topics in this work. The book will be inaugurated with a text in memory of Joxantonio Ormazabal and, then, an endless number of studies and reflections: the evolution of the literature of children and youths in Basque, the defense of children’s literature, the importance of children’s libraries, the analysis of the work of some authors and the interviews with them…

Etxaniz and López Gaseni systematic analysis

Another analysis by Xabier Etxaniz Erat and José Manuel López Gasendi is the one published today. We have two complementary works. The history of Basque children and youth literature is the first and the children and youth literature of the beginning of the twenty-first century is the second. Both papers will prioritize the scientific-academic approach to the personal view. Zubeldia likes incursions into the genre, pick up brushes, make observations here and there. Etxaniz and López Gasendi take the systematization as a path and move forward. As in the case of Zubeldia, the works of Etxaniz and López Gaseni also depart from the above, the Children and Youth Literature of the 1990s. Both at the time and last year, both authors analyze the same system of literature for children and youth in Euskera.

Etxaniz and López Gasen have travelled a path in their study, since they have worked from the beginning of the literature on children and youths in Euskera to the present day. Until 1990 first, after the 1990s, in the first decade of the new century. In the latest work we have at hand, in the so-called children and youth literature of the beginning of the twenty-first century, “after a historical introduction gender development is offered in the last decade, an analysis of the canon and the end of the situations and challenges of the current system”. In it, readers, writers, the institution, intermediaries, the market and the repertoire are the ingredients of the system.

Regarding the objectives of the study, Etxaniz and López Gasendi say: “On the one hand, to make known the current situation –what is the publication, who, the themes, the situation of the genders…–, and from this situation what are the challenges of our literature to be able to offer an increasingly complete and attractive literature; and on the other hand, this study intends to give way to others in the hope that new works will emerge from here”. There are Iñaki Zubeldia, two other studies, although not entirely: Thematic analysis of Garbiñe Salaberria and Txabi Arnal Gil. One of them has analyzed the presence of ethical and moral values in children's literature. The other focuses on the treatment of death in children's albums.

Canon, a trend at a given time

Suppose Iñaki Zubeldia says he tends to analyze authors and works “outside the official line” that have been “ignored”. On the contrary, it seems that Etxaniz and López Gaseni are looking at the canon, when they have analyzed the literature from the beginning of the century. And what do the canon have? “We refer to the works that are at the center of the system at a given time and to the characteristics of those works. We are not referring to works that had a specific value, but to works and authors that have prioritized and, therefore, have occupied a central position the institutions – academies, cultural institutions, universities, editorials, etc. – of that particular time”.

Canon does not in itself mean good or bad literature. In this sense, both authors have endorsed the words of Even Zohar: “At certain times, the tendency to group certain traits around a given status does not mean that such traits are ‘inevitable’ in relation to a given status.” It's a trend of the time.

Despite the canon, all writers have their entry into the so-called vegetable garden of the children's and youth literature of this early century.

Ethics, death in the literature

In addition to these studies on children's and youth literature, there are research papers on a specific aspect of the PhD literature and thesis. Among them are the works carried out by Txabi Arnal Gil and Garbiñe Salaberria. Salaberria has departed from ethics and has focused on ethical and moral values. To do so, he used literature books that are usually read by elementary and high school students, used the sample of 80 and made the thesis entitled Social contexts and values in the literature children and youth. His study focused on sociology, with 564 books, of which 80 were selected, among which the most welcoming among students, such as those from the Harry Potter collection, stood out. It is known that it is totally different those who read elementary school students on the one hand and high school students on the other. More concrete but not exclusively concrete themes appear in the books that read the first and most abstract in the second. As Salaberria has once said, although the narrative imagination is evident in one or the other, the ethical imagination has not developed at the same level, since many themes, experiences and experiences of this world can hardly be read in the students' readings.

Likewise, Arnal Gil resorted to a specific topic in his doctoral dissertation and analyzed the appearance of death in children's and youth literature albums, with a sample of 57 Spanish albums.

In the preamble to the thesis, Arnal Gil writes:

“I remember very well the day my grandfather Emilio died. I was ten years old. Grandpa, young man, had become a widower. Grandma died when our mother was a child. As she got older, her grandfather left the country. He came to live with us. For a season, we also shared the room. The houses of the workers have never been very large.

Grandpa died at home. It was suddenly, without warning. He entered the bed to pour a siestecite after eating and did not wake up. When I got back from school, I got the unexpected one. The house was crowded, and the mother and aunt cried endlessly, they welded, but they cried. I asked what it was, why there were so many people, and everything was so dark. My mother told me. I cried. I didn't need any explanation. I knew perfectly what had happened to my grandfather, and it was happening forever.

‘You want to see’, my mother’s question to me. ‘It’s in bed.’ I said yes, I wanted to see her. One of them said no to prevent him from entering the bedroom. The mother did not listen to him. He replied that he was my grandfather and that I, although I was a child, had the right to greet my grandfather.

Today, I thank my mother for giving me the opportunity to see and greet my grandfather. His body didn't bother me. I had a grandfather and loved him, dead or alive. It was my ‘first death’, my first experience with death, and certainly when similar experiences have happened to me, it has helped me a lot.”

To the point of examining in depth the eleven faces of death in the literature and making his thesis: Treatment of death in the illustrated children's album.