Onnimanni 4/2005
| Päivi
Heikkilä-Halttunen’s editorial deals with the rules for the Finlandia
Junior award, since they were recently criticised for containing gaps and
leaving too much room for interpretation. Riikka Käkelä-Rantalainen has edited an anthology of her mother Kaarina Helakisa’s fairy tales. Interviewed by Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen she talks about her work as a freelancer and remembers her childhood. A love of children’s culture and books has been transferred from mother to daughter. Editing her mother’s fairy tales was rewarding, since her ”work” consisted of reading fairy tales with children and she got the opportunity to experience texts familiar from childhood from an adult perspective. Sisko Ylimartimo has experienced London by walking in the footsteps of Paddington and Harry Potter, tasting the atmosphere of e.g. Paddington and King’s Cross railway stations. She also elaborates on how these books came into being and looks for common features in them. In 1956 a classic work of Finnish children’s poetry was published, Kirsi Kunnas’s Tiitiäisen satupuu. According to Leena Kirstinä, Kunnas renewed children’s poetry. For instance, her poems have the same poetics whether they are written for children or adults. Disregarding the audience, Kunnas’s poems span over microcosms to infinity, they contain embedded chains of images and elements of nature, which were all characteristic traits of poetry in the 1950s. Kunnas reintroduced and renewed the children’s poetry genre from rhymes to epigrams and fables, and many of her poems are characterised by absurdism, dadaism, surrealism and nonsense. Kunnas’s poems are often dramatic and the protagonists have strong voices of their own. Her poetry is about raising awareness of selfhood and various forms of existence. Sakari Katajamäki explores nonsense in Kirsi Kunnas’s children’s poetry. He finds influences from Anglo-Saxon nonsense poetry by e.g. Lear and Carroll. Katajamäki analyses Kunnas’s poem "Piirespaaresmaan kuningas” in terms of verbal play and he investigates the topsy-turvy and contradictory concepts used. A central element in the poem is the nose, and Katajamäki expands upon the nose motif in nonsense poetry in general. Examples for comparison are taken from other poems by Kunnas, as well as from other poets. Päivi Nordling reflects upon young adult novels that deal with drug abuse. The Finnish pioneering work on this subject was Margareta Keskitalo’s Tabut (1970), available in the 70s in the successful translation Go ask Alice (1971). The effects of drugs were then depicted very dramatically and - from a contemporary perspective - rather comically. During the 80s there was not much written on the subject apart from bestselling Christiane F’s Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo and Deborah Spungen’s Nancy. The second wave of drugs hit Finland in the 1990s when e.g. Tuula Kallioniemi, Pirkko Talvio and Raili Mikkanen addressed the topic. Burgess’s novel Junk caused an uproar. In 2000 drug abuse is often embedded within other motifs. Novels that deal specifically with drugs are harsh and depressing reading, although the Finnish books often are stories of survival. Kyllikki Keravuori presents two classics from her childhood illustrated by Oskar Pletsch: Lapsuuden ajoilta (1881) which contains poems by Samuli Suomalainen, and Från Lifvets Morgon which is written by Karl Robert Malmström. The news section announces the following rewards: Leena Laulajainen has received the children’s book award Tirlittan from The Union of Finnish Writers; and Mauri Kunnas has been given the Tietopöllö award from The Finnish Association of Non-Fiction Writers. The nominees for the Finlandia Junior award are: Katri Kirkkopello and Suna Vuori’s picturebook Hirveää, parkaisi hirviö, Tuula Korolainen’s poetry collection Kuono kohti tähteä, Tuija Lehtinen’s novel Mopo, Reetta Niemelä’s collection of stories Makkarapiruetti, Nora Schuurman’s novel Auringonkukkatalvi and Maria Vuorio’s collection of stories Siitä ei kukaan tiedä. The nominees for the Tieto-Finlandia award include a sex guide for young adults called Hei, beibi mä oon tulta by Pia Brandt, Erja Korteniemi, Raisa Cacciatore and Maarit Huovinen. Translation: Maria Lassén-Seger |
