Around the turn of the twentieth century, several retellings of Homer’s epic and Greek mythology were published for children in Sweden. Fridtjuv Berg’s Trojanska kriget (The Trojan War, 1901) in the canonical publication series Barnbiblioteket Saga (The Children’s Library Saga) became one of the most long-lived. This article examines the characteristics of Berg’s rewriting by an analysis of the organization of the narrative, paratextual features, and the depiction of gender. Berg’s strategies are compared with another contemporary rewriting of The Iliad, Kata Dalström’s Grekiska guda- och hjältesagor (Greek Tales of Gods and Heroes, 1893). The article shows that the two rewritings mainly depict the same events and in the same order. Trojanska kriget foregrounds the historical content of The Iliad in the paratexts and by structuring the narrative around the foundation and fall of Troy. Dalström’s paratexts stress the timelessness of the work by references to a long cultural tradition, which is reinforced by illustrations depicting artworks from different eras. Berg’s book is more richly and uniformly illustrated, and Louis Moe’s illustrations highlight the action of the tale. Furthermore, Berg and Dalström focus on different aspects when abridging the tales, which influences the depiction of gender. While both rewritings describe a patriarchal society, Berg puts greater emphasis on male relationships and heroism. The women are mainly described as passive victims of war or masculinist power structures. Dalström’s version contains a greater variety of women. The comparison makes clear that Berg’s greater interest in the historical and factual aspects of Homer’s epic may have contributed to a more conservative gender ideology. At the same time, the rapid action of Trojanska kriget together with the publication context in Barnbiblioteket Saga are probably two of the factors behind the book’s success.

Sweden in the Hands of Robbers. The Narrative of the Nation in Sven Wernström’s Den underbara resan

Sven Wernström’s Den underbara resan (‘‘The Wonderful Journey’’) describes a modern Sweden by following in the trail of Selma Lagerlöf’s classic The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. This article analyzes Wernström’s depiction of Sweden and its people. By incorporating The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, the author foregrounds the notion of nation as narrative by stressing the subjectivity of the text and processes of creation. Rather than subscribing to Lageröf’s vision of unity, Wernström describes a Sweden divided by class conflict. Being a true Swede is defined through economic disinterestedness and love of nature. Den underbara resan describes the creation of a model citizen through the bildung of the protagonist. However, the ideal citizen is not depicted as a loyal subject but as an independent person willing to critize people in power and protest against injustice

”That Church is the Most Beautiful in the World”: The Orthodox Church and Icons in the Childhood Narratives and Pictures of Ilon Wikland 

Ilon Wikland (b. Pääbo, 1930), a well-known illustrator of children’s books, has depicted her childhood in Estonia and her search for refuge in Sweden in 1944 in four picturebooks (1995–2007). This article focuses on Den långa, långa resan (1995; The Long, Long Journey, with text by Rose Lagercrantz) and I min farmors hus (2005; In My Grandmother’s House, with text by Barbro Lindgren), with the aim of examining the role of Orthodox churches and icons in Ilon Wikland’s childhood narratives and pictures. Wikland’s grandfather was the leader of the choir in the local Orthodox church in Haapsalu. It is demonstrated that depictions of this church and icons from her grandparents’ home help to place the picturebooks in time and space and contribute to their autobiographical and historical accuracy. Three different themes found in the narratives are explored, since they are essential for the protagonist’s experiences of warfare and ight, and interrelated with the functions of the Orthodox church and its icons. The first is the girl’s sense of freedom and beauty at home and at the Orthodox church. The second theme is her loneliness and desolation when separated from her grandparents and her best friend during the war, situations in which the icons seem to participate in her despair. The third theme is the signi cance of the name, Ilon, for the girl’s emerging identity, as well as for the convergence of the protagonist’s identity with the illustrator’s, similar to how an Orthodox icon is identi ed by means of an inscription containing the name of the depicted person. The conclusion is, that Ilon Wikland has not only rendered the Orthodox church of her childhood and the icons of her grandparents in her pictures. Furthermore, she has recreated their importance for her early life and connected her illustrations with the theology and aesthetics of Orthodox icons. 

”God, Now I Have Only You”: Theological, Narratological and Rhetorical Aspects of the Child’s Close Relationship to God in the Poetry of Britt G. Hallqvist

Works by the Swedish poet and hymn writer Britt G. Hallqvist (1914–97) were of crucial importance for the renewal of Christian poetry for children in Sweden during the 1960’s and 70’s. The aim of this article is to examine how the child’s relationship to God is shaped in Hallqvist’s prayers, poems and hymns for children from this period. Usually hymns for children depict God by means of description, but Hallqvist creates an active and reciprocal relationship between the child and God. She retells well-known Bible stories with a focus on children and from the perspective of children. In her poetry, she allows children to pose questions to God and to speak candidly with God, thereby enabling them to approach God with parrhesia. Furthermore, to characterize God, Hallqvist prefers metonymical devices – contiguity, personal relationships and human actions – and consequently she recognizes and defines God “by the children in his arms” (in a poem translated into English by Gracia Grindal in Preaching from Home, 2011: 223f). By such devices, Hallqvist’s Christian poetry for children becomes an ongoing conversation, characterized not by static definitions and descriptions but by action, movement and dialogue. Her so-called poetic theology turns out as inseparable from child theology, where the little child is placed in the center and regarded as foremost.

A Big Department Store in a Big City. Daydreams and Consumer Criticism in Children’s Literature

In advertising, marketing, and product catalogs from the first decades of the 20th century, the newly launched department stores often describe their toy departments as a ”fairy tale world”, ”children’s paradise” or ”toy land”. They are depicted as spaces for play and enjoyment, but above all, as spaces for daydreams. These expressions and images – loaded with messages and ideals about children, consumption, and modernity – were quickly transferred to children’s literature. Based on research from advertising history as well as modernism and modernity studies, the article discusses how the department store in the mid-1900s becomes a new variant of the Schlaraffenland or the Cockaigne motif in Scandinavian children’s literature. Focusing on stories published between 1933 and 1965, depictions of children as consumers and the child’s  interaction with the department store and its products are investigated. In the studied stories, different variations of the Schlaraffenland motif – excess of toys, experiences, and food – are used to playfully depict hildren’s encounters with the commodity world, but also to investigate questions about the individual’s responsibilities as a consumer and ideas about individuality, freedom, and modernity.

“Radical Children’s Literature” is a theme issue that investigates children’s literature that in some way, in content, message or form, challenges norms and conventions both within children’s literature and outside it. Radical ideas about children’s literature can reflect a general desire to break free from prevailing norms, artistic boundaries and labels in books for children, but also from traditional constructions of childhood depicted in them. Radical ideas and aesthetics in children’s literature was the topic of an international conference at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University in November 2018. Six contributions from this conference are now gathered within this theme issue in the journal Barnboken.

This article examines ideas surrounding abstract, modernist art for children during the post-war era by analyzing play sculptures and picturebooks created by Egon Møller-Nielsen, a Danish-Swedish sculptor and artist. His monumental sculptures for children received international attention during the 1950s, and became influential and representative for progressive ideas about art and children in both the United States and in Europe. How, then, is the notion of art articulated and expressed in this context? And how are these ideas connected to the ideological position that children have in the rebuilding of the post-war society in Europe? Egon Møller-Nielsen described his play sculpture as a “lekmaskin” (play machine), paraphrasing Le Corbusier’s famous modernist term for a house, “machine à habiter” (a machine for living in). This kind of use of terminology demonstrates how play sculpture is situated at the core of notions concerning public art, architecture and sculpture in post-war Europe. It also encapsulates ideas of children as the future citizens of the welfare state, and thus, ideas about how these new citizens could be created and formed. Modernist play sculptures and experimental books for children can be seen as a means of equipping children with knowledge of art, thereby creating better adult consumers of art, which identifies children as both an integral part of the utopian vision of modern existence and as future consumers. The play sculpture is thus based on the idea of a new citizen who is also a new kind of art consumer, and can thus be seen as a sculptural embodiment of an idea of the modern child.

An Overview of Picturebook Research in Sweden. Establishment and Expansion

Picturebook research in the Nordic countries is in a vital and interesting phase, characterized by both established positions and expansion. The article discusses the development in the field, from the stage of initiation in the early 1980s to becoming an established and varied research area. A number of disciplines and lines can be traced in picturebook research today. While some researchers have focused on the history of the media, others have studied the complex relationship between the text and the images or tried to develop the theoretical framework of the medium. Another prominent approach is to investigate what happens in the reading experience and process and how picturebooks might develop children's literacy skills. Despite discipline or focus, picturebook research in Sweden has established itself as a special research field within children's literature research. While mainly discussing Swedish research, the article also attempts to demonstrate connections and differences with the research field in the other Nordic countries.

This article discusses aspects of the human-animal relationships in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla series, using a theoretical framework consisting of ecofeminism and literary animal studies. Ecofeminist scholars demonstrate how the problematic of gender and nature are linked, and this article focuses on how Gulla’s relationship with some significant animals enables her to envision a social ideal that undermines the patriarchal power structures that are dominant in her society. The worldview that emerges resists anthropocentric normativity by suggesting a more inclusive, biocentric utopia where the boundaries between nature, humans and non-human animals become fluid. Reading the Kulla-Gulla books from a perspective that is attentive to the presence of animals reveals the extent of the interconnectedness of the human and non-human spheres of life. The narrative attributes agency to a number of animals, which allows them to become a vital part of the social fabric of the novels. Without being reduced to metaphorical devices, they speak up and their voices are heard by some of the human characters. Their status as agents allows them to mediate social changes in a society that is not presented as exclusively human. In the literary universe of Kulla-Gulla, where social hierarchies and gender patterns appear to be firmly established, some characters, both animal and human, are able to destabilize and subvert these patterns with their border-crossing qualities. Their voices and actions express what the human characters are not able to, and by doing so, they undermine strict humanist dualisms.

The ethical and epistemological challenges accompanying representations of the past have been at the center of historiography at least since the days of Leopold von Ranke in the mid-nineteenth century. The artific eof representational forms, as well as the ideological entanglements of the position of enunciation, has always been in conflict with Ranke’s historio- graphical goal of telling the past as “it really was”. In the heyday of postmodernism and in the wake of the so-called linguistic turn, the epistemological and ethical impact of representational forms was widely debated. This paper uses two concepts presented during the postmodernist debates – Linda Hutcheon’s “historiographical metafiction” and Hayden White’s “practical past” – in a discussion of two graphic narratives about the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman’s canonical Maus. A Survivor’s Tale (1991) and Vi kommer snart hem igen (2018) by Jessica Bab Bonde and Peter Bergting. Adapting Hutcheon’s and White’s concepts to a posthumanist and media-ecological conceptuality, in which the worldmaking power of media is highlighted as a co-productive or sympoietic process, the paper “Picturing Pastness. Comics, Media Ecology and Memory in Maus and Vi kommer snart hem igen” shows how the past is not represented, but rather emerges from the embodied participation in the medium as memory technology.

‘‘To distinguish true from false love: Manly and unmanly bodies in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla series.’’ The protagonist Gulla in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s (1913-2000) Kulla-Gulla series (1945-51) encounters ’’true’’ and ’’false’’ love through two men, Tomas Tomasson and Ivan Malma. The hypothesis of this article is that true love is placed in a manly body and false love in an unmanly body. Tomas’ and Ivan’s manliness and unmanliness are constructed through characteristics which are marked by different power categories, such as gender, age, class, ‘‘race’’ and functionality. Therefore an intersectional perspective is used. I find that Tomas and Ivan have similar social positions except for their different classes. Tomas’ body is portrayed as manly, mobile and warm, whereas Ivan’s body is characterized as unmanly, immobile and cold. Tomas evokes love in Gulla, whereas Ivan arouses lust as well as ambivalence. Tomas’ manly body functions as a signal for true love and guides the reader as well as Gulla in distinguishing his true from Ivan’s false love. When Gulla chooses Tomas, she is defined as an adult.

The aim of this article is to explore the queer possibilities of the silence in the depiction of the protagonist’s love life in Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s Tony trilogy (1922–1926). The silence in the trilogy is manifested through absence: the theme of “ingenting” (nothing), the protagonist not speaking or acting, and the aesthetic that is created by interruptions in the protagonist’s dialogue, inner monologue, and narration. The analysis focuses on three passages: a depiction of an encounter between Tony and one of her suitors, her relative Frank Maclean, in Tonys läroår (Tony’s Apprenticeship, 1924); the ending of the trilogy in Tonys sista läroår (Tony’s Last Apprenticeship, 1926); and an epilogue to the trilogy, which was never included in it but later published in the second, expanded edition of En dagdriverskas anteckningar (The Notes of a Flâneuse, 1934). They are contextualised with references to the trilogy as a whole and compared to Krusenstjerna’s previous novels Ninas dagbok (The Diary of Nina, 1917) and Helenas första kärlek (Helena’s First Love, 1918). The method is a close reading with instead of against the grain, focusing on queer aspects of depictions of heterosexuality. It draws on theory belonging to the anti-social turn of queer studies and queer temporality studies. My conclusion is that Tony not speaking or acting can be read as anti-social feminism, with Tony as an anti-social feminist subject. Her queer life schedule can be interpreted as unbecoming woman. The “nothing,” and implicitly the creativity, that her passivity leads to accomplishes the opposite of patriarchal and chrononormative structures. The narrative and its ending are queer in the sense that they refuse to cohere and to fulfil demands for a happy, emancipatory ending.

Kjell Grede’s Hugo and Josephine. An Expression of Children’s Culture of Its Time and a Children’s Film of Tomorrow

The debut feature film of director Kjell Grede, Hugo and Josephine (1967), is an adaptation of Maria Gripe’s literary trilogy and is often referred to as the best Swedish children’s film ever made. Upon its premiere, the film was very well received by the critics, but some also claimed that it wasn’t suitable for children. This article uses this ambivalence towards Hugo and Josephine as its starting point and demonstrates, via adaptation studies, film studies and childhood studies, how the film transgresses children’s film conventions.

For example, my analysis of the film form reveals that Hugo and Josephine is a story largely taking place inside the protagonist. Therefore, it should not be seen as a realistic depiction of a series of events, but rather as a formation of a child’s apprehension of the same events. This filmic mode, which I term “a child’s realism”, can be interpreted through the liminal spacetime as well as hyperbolic and phantasmic occurrences. Also, the film thematises childhood as a social construction by presenting different ways of being a child and an adult respectively.

In this way, Hugo and Josephine transgresses the children’s film conventions of the time and, concurrently, puts into question the boundaries between childhood and adulthood as well as the rigid division between fine arts for children and adults respectively. These social and artistic issues were highly topical towards the end of the 1960’s, and therefore Grede’s film is characteristic for its time. But simultaneously, it forebodes the artistically and thematically seminal Swedish films and TV series for children of the 1970’s.

Cultural representations of entrepreneurship frequently overshadow positive traits in favor of greed as a central motif, particularly in children’s culture. The Swedish Christmas calendar, broadcasted on national television, has been criticized for conveying a negative view of capitalism including a portrayal of entrepreneurs as villains. However, emphasis on profession fails to acknowledge its engagement with entrepreneurship in relation to the neoliberal version of homo economicus (the economic subject). Drawing on the writings of Michel Foucault and Gary S. Becker, the aim is to show that portrayals of entrepreneurship in the Christmas calendar evoke both positive and negative connotations. In the Dickens-inspired calendar Tjuvarnas jul (The thieves’ Christmas, 2011), the two main antagonists are the head of a department store and the captain of the thieves. Both are portrayed as void of moral judgment, aiming to accumulate capital, but unlike the captain of the thieves, the head of the department store reinvests hers. Re-investment emerges as the main dividing line between good and bad capitalist behavior. When the head of the department store stops re-investing, leaving a monetary deficit behind, the accumulated funds oft he captain of the thieves secure market balance and a flourishing of professional entrepreneurship. In the calendar Kaspar i Nudådalen (Kaspar in Nudå valley, 2001), the protagonist aims to receive a maximum amount of Christmas gifts. To ensure this, he creates a measuring tool whereby he can evaluate his actions and its outcome: good actions allow him to advance a step and bad actions force him to retreat. His everyday accounting emphasizes the construction of subjectivity as a distinct homo economicus as the measuring tool begins to shape his being, disciplining his thoughts and actions. Together, the two Christmas calendars emphasize entrepreneurship as an ambivalent discourse beyond a biased negative view of capitalism in children’s culture.

Between Allan Rune Pettersson’s novels Frankenstein’s Aunt (1978) and Frankenstein’s Aunt Returns (1989) there emerges a contradictory view on discipline. Whilst being a dominant motif in the first novel, discipline of the monstrous is dissuaded from in the second. This article aims to explain this contradiction through an analysis of the different meanings ascribed to the monstrous body in the two novels. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory and Michail Bachtin’s work on the chronotope is used whilst intermedia theory provides a framework to explain the relation between the novels in the light of a TV series based on the first novel. The first novel creates a gothic chronotope where the protagonist Hanna Frankenstein tries to atone for her nephew’s sins in the past (his creation of the Monster). Here, the monstrous body is assigned meaning through a correlation with the discourse on the child, which legitimizes disciplining the monsters. In the TV series, monstrosity is described as a result of loneliness and consequently, the function of discipline is altered. The Monster falls in love with a human girl and, thanks to aunt Hanna’s efforts, he eventually marries her. Thus, monstrosity is obliterated altogether. In the second novel, aunt Hanna accuses the Monster and his bride of betraying their individuality. However, as their bourgeois lifestyle is the result of her own acts of discipline in the first novel, she now has to atone for new sins in the past – this time her own. The second novel thus reinvents the gothic chronotope and re-interprets the first novel in the light of the TV series, providing a missing link between the novels. In the end, the second novel advocates the co-existence of the monstrous alongside the human.

Recensionen behandlar antologin Astrid Lindgren - Werk und Wirkung: internationale und interkulturelle Aspekte som kom ut 2009 och är utgiven av Svenja Blume, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer och Angelika Nix.

A Token for Children av James Janeway var förmodligen en av de första realistiska barnböckerna på engelska. Här presenteras en analys som visar att den religiösa retoriken inte bara innehåller religiösa budskap och didaktik utan även subversiva element. Artikelförfattaren frågar sig hur textens retorik är uppbyggd, hur den används och hur den förhåller sig till textens intention.

Children's literature in Sweden can be roughly divided into before and after the Reformation. Before the Reformation interesting, didactic texts with entertaining exemplary stories for the young were translated and adapted. During the 16th century very few literary texts – for children as well as adults – were published, mainly because the king had total control over the printing. Only texts sanctioned by the king were published. During the 17th century publications for the young increased and some, but not all of them, also address children or youth in the title or the preface. Earlier this was mainly implied, although some authors were explicit as well. In working with older literature I find it valuable to not just consider the intention of the text but the function as well, since more literary texts had the function of being children's literature in the Middle Ages than has been previously presumed. Folk tales, fairy tales and fables are among the genres that were indeed written for and used to educate children. Modern historical research, as well as my own, shows that there is not one but several different concepts of childhood existing at the same time. I also suggest that children's literature may be used as a perspective. If we try to find a universal, timeless definition it will have to be a compromise that may not help us to answer questions about the literary tradition and of how children and adolescents have been included and addressed, educated and entertained through literature in different historical and cultural contexts.

Criticism of children’s literature is not, although it to often may seem so, a phenomenon of the later half of the 20^th century. The contradiction between didactics and aesthetics, for many established as an axiom in modern children’s literature research, has been contra productive when it comes to differences between older and modern literature. While older has become representative for the didactic, the simple and the single-minded, modern has become representative for the aesthetic, the complex and the multifold (the ambiguous).

On basis of an extensive material of texts, theories and pictures (comparisons with pictorial art are taken in) the article analyses from a constructional perspective long lived assumptions and paradigms and argues for a new methodology – the archaeology of children’s literature research - that includes both the research itself and the researcher. Examples from recent research (Penny Brown, Beverly Lyon Clark, Marah Gubar) clearly show that contextualising literature within history, criticism and debate may result in new and corrective approaches. Motifs, passions and goals of the researcher are all part of the research. Self-reflection is the central keyword.

This article explores nine Swedish children’s picture books that portray children and other people living in poverty. The aim is to scrutinize the discursive and aesthetical practices that construct the literary image of poverty, poor people, and their relationship to society and each other. The article shows that the Swedish picture book participates in recent debates on child poverty and begging EU citizens. The representations of social inequality include both depictions of poor children and of children meeting socially excluded people, such as beggars. The depictions are located in between discourses on poverty, children, and children’s rights. Inequality is, on the one hand, represented by a lack of material resources, such as new rubber boots or expensive fruit, and on the other, by adults begging in the street. The aesthetics of the picture book format is utilized in a productive way, encouraging readers to reflect on questions of poverty, power, and solidarity.

The article examines the ecological and aesthetic dimensions of trash in Barbro Lindgren’s children’s books Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang (1969) and Loranga, Loranga (1970). It investigates how Lindgren develops a waste aesthetics by inscribing the child, the play, and the children’s book in a contemporary environmental critique of waste disposal. I argue that her aesthetics differs from the established image of political children’s literature around 1968.

The article contributes to the growing field of waste studies, a research area intertwined with material ecocriticism and modernity studies. Stories that connect waste with play and fantasy have the ability to work as counter-narratives and bridge the gulf between human culture and non-human nature. In a traditional environmental discourse nature is configured as a passive victim of exploitation and contamination. These kinds of narratives are performative in their disenchantment of the human-nature relationship, and perpetuate alienation and disinterest. Lindgren’s waste aesthetics, on the other hand, encourages a productive relationship to trash and Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang and Loranga, Loranga are examples of counter-narratives.

This article examines the picturebooks Lilla spöket Laban (The Little Ghost Laban, 1965), Vad lilla Anna sparade på (What Little Anna Saved, 1965), Pojken med de många husen (The Boy with the Many Houses, 1968) and Filurstjärnan (The Filur Star, 1969) by Inger and Lasse Sandberg from a waste-oriented perspective. The theoretical framework originates from waste studies, a growing field of cultural analysis that focuses on trash, decay, and toxic sites. The article argues that the Sandbergs’ works can be read as a critique of life in the Wasteocene, an era marked by waste production, overconsumption, and environmental degradation. During the 1960s and 1970s, Inger and Lasse Sandberg develop a waste aesthetics that challenge the Wasteocene logic by foregrounding leftover pieces and imperfect objects. Firstly, the article presents an analysis of the collage technique in Sandbergs’ works, mainly in Lilla spöket Laban. Secondly, it examines the bricoleur motif in Vad lilla Anna sparade på and Pojken med de många husen. Finally, the environmental theme in Filurstjärnan is explored. The article concludes that Inger and Lasse Sandberg’s picturebooks highlight and transcend the Wasteocene logic in terms of both form and content. The waste aesthetics and environmental motifs challenge the dualistic narrative of the capitalist system by questioning the hierarchical division between commodity and trash, the beautiful and the ugly, the amateur and the professional. The picturebooks can thus be read as counter-narratives advocating an alternative view of value and beauty. 

Urban space: An examination of the coming of age of Majken in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s novel trilogy about the Oskarsson family

In this article I examine the ways in which Martha Sandwall-Bergström uses urban places and milieus to depict the coming of age of the protagonist Majken in Aldrig en lugn stund hos Oskarssons (1952), Allt händer hos Oskarssons (1953) and Majken Stolt, född Oskarsson (1954). With support from Henri Lefebvres concept of social space, I argue that Sandwall-Bergström employs the social spaces of the city to depict Majken’s development.

In her search for a new identity Majken moves trough a variety of social spaces, typical for a big city of the 1950’s. My point is that the actual searching takes place in the public spaces of the inner city, on streets, in shopping malls and nightspots. This can be read as a period of development and freedom before Majken has to adjust herself to a more conventional way of life. The trilogy describes a circular movement from one home to another but at the same time also a social journey. Repeatedly Sandwall-Bergström contrasts the overcrowded and dirty working class apartment of Majken’s childhood with the bright and clean spaces of urban modernity.

The Boys’ Nation According to Ulf Stark: A Literary Excursion in Stureby

A great part of Ulf Stark’s literary œuvre takes place in Stureby, a suburb south of Stockholm, and more specifically Stureby in the 1950s, the place and era of the author’s own boyhood. Although the environment we enter via Stark’s authorship is to be regarded as his imaginary universe, an investigation such as this shows that there are several links and correspondences between the literary setting and the real suburb. In order to investigate some of these connections, this study invokes two theoretical fields. The first one is literary geography, more precisely Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad, concerning three both different and interacting ways of understanding a room: the perceived, the conceptualized, and the social. Furthermore this survey takes into account different historical documents concerning Stureby, and also a form of literary excursion, a pondering walking tour around Stureby of today, with Stark’s narrative in mind. The second theoretical field is boyhood studies and in particular the idea of a boys’ own “nation”, a distinct cultural world with its own rituals and own symbols and values: a social space where the boys play outside the rules of the adult world. The book chosen for this investigation is Stark’s Min vän Percys magiska gymnastikskor (My Friend Percy’s Magical Gym Shoes, 1991). The study shows that specific places in Stureby, such as the suburban road, the tunnel, the kiosk, and the subway bridge are invaded and appropriated by the boys, and turned into arenas of different boy culture rituals and adventures. This, in turn, means that the geographical places described in Stark’s work influence the style of the work – for example its narrative action, its vocabulary, the narrative devices, and the compositional form.