Why Write Stories about the Past?

Abstract

The article focuses on three representative literary works for children between 9 and 12 by Christos Boulotis, a renowned contemporary Greek writer of children’s literature. His works which are exemplary of a broader tendency of contemporary Greek historical literature for children revolve around the concepts of the personal and public past and of personal and collective memory. We show that the specific works by Boulotis tend not only to make the concepts of the personal and public/historical past an issue but also to stress the importance of these concepts for the lives of contemporary people. At the same time, we show that because literature for children is inevitably ideological, the concepts of the personal and public historical past are used by Boulotis as a resource for the promotion of specific contemporary ideologies which are at the forefront of the public debate in contemporary Greek society, such as the universality of the experience of being a refugee, anti-racism, and pacifism.