WAR IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

Abstract

The analysis of contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and youth has shown that the war theme is a key one and among the most relevant topics in the publications in the last two years. The article analyzes the peculiarities of the artistic representation of war in picture books, short stories, fairy tales, and novels «The War That Changed Rondo» by Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv, «Yellow Butterfly» by Oleksandr Shatokhin, «Rooster, Cat. Cabinet» by Oleksandr Mykhed, «My Forced Vacation» by Kateryna Yehorushkina, «Apricots bloom at night» by Olia Rusina, «Secret stories of small and big victories» by Tanya Stus, «The Alphabet of War» by Yevgen and Solomiya Stepanenko, «The Victory Rooster» Zoryana Zhyvka and other. It was determined that focusing on a certain age category of readers leads to the appearance of typical models of artistic representation of war. In the center of the plot development of events there is: 1) a child, a young narrator, who from a child's point of view and through the prism of one’s own experience describes emotional state and events; 2) fairy-tale characters that are recognizable, have conventional prototypes (dog Patron, Cat, Rooster, Cupboard) or appeared on the basis of folklore reminiscences; 3) the war as a destructive force that is opposed and defeated by positive characters («The War That Changed Rondo»). Markers of war are revealed in: – titles of works, plots and issues (destruction, loss of home, danger and death, separation from relatives, war trauma, etc.), – images of the main characters (child witnesses, war victims, war images-symbols, etc.), – genre-narrative types of writing (first-person narration of the narrator-child who had to live in the conditions of war; children's point of view and emotional experience; confessional, diary writing, autobiography), – chronotope; – vocabulary, language. Illustrations that visualize texts built on contrasts contain color palettes and images that symbolize the dichotomy of «good and evil». The drama and tragedy of war in works addressed to young readers, as a rule, turn into an optimistic visualization of victory and a bright future.