How to Write Children’s Literature About War and Other Vulnerable, Controversial Topics

Ukrainian writer Viktoriia Medvied explores the question of how to translate the unspeakable into plain language and protect Ukrainian children through multilingual fairy tales about the war.

Abstract

Difficult times require expanding the range of topics covered by children's literature. Over the past year and a half, Ukrainian literature has been enriched with many topics of children’s literature, which were not accepted for discussion before February 2022.
I am researching the question of how to translate the unspeakable into plain language and protect Ukrainian children through multilingual fairy tales about the war, engaging the concepts of cognitive metaphor, narrative psychology, fairy-tale- and biblio-therapy. The aspect of fairy-tale-therapy (in other words, the option to create a narrative to discuss things thoroughly with a young reader) offers a wide range of possibilities for those who are interested in writing for young people. Writing on such a vulnerable topic, a writer would need to consider a wide range of issues to make their texts non-traumatic. When creating texts as a future tool to relieve stress for the young audience, we must be attentive to the main principles, which I highly recommend are followed by any young/young adult fiction author (I am specifying this particular genre because this is what I am specialising in).
Questions arising include: how best to write Ukrainian children’s literature – and texts in general – about the war and other controversial topics? What to expect from the vulnerable matters’ discussion development in the text? Is it better to get rid of all the

expectations before writing a book? Or to filter diligently not to traumatise your reader? And will the usual, common metaphors work in the field of the unusual?