Recent cultural budget cuts in Finland have hit the sector broadly. This year, the Ministry of Education and Culture reduced their annual financial support to the Finnish Institute for Children’s Literature by 26%. The institute is currently revising its strategy. In her editorial, director Kaisa Laaksonen expresses hope that these financially challenging times can be overcome through collaboration.
Annu Viheriälehto – middle school lecturer in Finnish language and literature – has read the latest short story collections for young readers. She concludes that short prose is well-suited for text analysis and exercises in language and literature classes. In recent years, there has been a notable increase in short stories written in plain language. These texts offer students who, for various reasons, have not enjoyed reading a chance to do so.
Ex libris, or bookplates, are a fascinating aspect of book culture and their imagery often reveals something about their owners. In his article, Erkki Tuominen presents Finnish children’s and YA literature authors’ and illustrators’ ex libris. For example, Tove Jansson, Maija Karma, Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen have designed ex libris for themselves, as well as for colleagues and relatives. 1940s wartime was the golden age of ex libris. Books were then among the few readily available cultural products, making ownership a source of pride and prompting people to personalize their home libraries.
Over her long career, illustrator Maija Karma (1914–1999) transformed the depiction of children in Finnish children’s literature. Literary scholar Leena Romu has studied Karma’s comics published in children’s magazines, especially during the 1940s and 1950s. These comics have been little researched, yet their humour and portrayal of everyday life make them stand out from the more didactic children’s comics of the time. In the archives, Romu has found intriguing examples of how Karma in her comics used narrative elements from the illustrated stories about her own life that she sent to relatives and friends.
Edith Arkko has received the institute’s Punni Prize for her plain-language YA novel Aurora/Eino (Hertta Kustannus, 2024). The novel presents the same events from the perspectives of two middle school students. The jury praised Arkko’s skill in portraying two young people from very different backgrounds, how they get acquainted and fall in love. As a Finnish language and literature teacher, Arkko has observed how students with varying skills and backgrounds increasingly benefit from plain-language books.
According to the institute’s annual Kirjakori statistics, over 1 300 books for children and young adults were published in Finland last year. The increase in children’s books is mainly due to the rise in easy-to-read book series aimed at early readers, whereas the number of individual children’s novels and fairy tale collections is low. A record 131 domestic YA novels were published. The range of translated books is narrower than before, consisting mainly of translations from English. Never in the Kirjakori statistics has translations accounted for as low as 45% of all published titles. A brief overview of Kirjakori 2024 is available on the institute’s English web page.
Translation: Maria Lassén-Seger