Ukrainian Canadian Children’s Historical Fiction in the Interpretation of Mateusz Świetlicki. Review of the book: Świetlicki Mateusz, Next-Generation Memory and Ukrainian Canadian Children’s Historical Fiction: The Seeds of Memory, Routledge, New York–London 2023

Abstract

The review analyzes Mateusz Świetlicki’s monograph 'Next-Generation Memory and Ukrainian Canadian Children’s Historical Fiction: The Seeds of Memory' (2023). The author’s impressive corpus of anglophone Ukrainian Canadian children’s historical fiction consists of 41 texts published between 1991 and 2021, including novels, novellas, picture books, short stories, and graphic novels. As it will be shown, the scientist describes the specifics of historical literature for young readers, considering both the combination of historical truth and fiction and the peculiarities of receptive poetics aimed at actualizing the child reader’s “sense of personal identity”. The claim is made that Mateusz Świetlicki’s book monograph is not only an important contribution to the study of Ukrainian Canadian and Canadian children’s literature, highlighting the history of Ukraine and the relations of Ukrainians with other peoples in Canada, but also a fascinating story about how reading, imagining, and reimagining history can lead to the formation of beyond-textual next-generation memory. Finally, as shall be argued, Świetlicki demonstrates that historical novels may help young readers understand the complexity of the Ukrainian past and present. The cultural memory of the Red Terror, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, the Second World War, as well as the current war, the genocide of Ukrainians committed by Putin and the Russian army, must be preserved, so that future generations understand the value of freedom, diversity, tolerance, and democracy that have to become a priority of every nation and state in order not to give a chance to wars, genocides, and Nazism.