Meetings with the Past: Figures of Memory, Values, and Education in Contemporary Polish Narratives for Children and Young Adults

Contemporary Polish children’s historical novel is genre-differentiated. It grows out of a traditional historical, travel-adventure, crime and sensational novel, but it also takes into account fairy-tale storyline structures and fantasy in a broader sense. As shown in the article – the current shape of these stories, rooted in the individual and collective culture of remembrance – is a peculiar combination of various types of narration, both literary biographies and historical “facts,” curiosities from the lives of the rulers, taking genre-hybrid and syncretic forms maintained also in the poetics of postmodern novels, practical tasks or playing with conventions. However, the most important – from the point of view of a child’s audience – is exposed in these stories the world of axiology and the issue of shaping ethical attitudes.