Swedish children's books in the University Library

Ilka Heale browses some of the children's books held in our collections.

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Whilst searching through our Literature section, I came across a collection of children's books written in Swedish. Four of the authors were born and lived in Sweden, and the fifth also wrote in Swedish (although she was Finnish).

Why do we have them? Well, the short answer is that I don't know! The Library has over a million books, the majority of which have been bought for teaching and research. However, we also have many books that have been donated over the years and these may have been part of a gift.

Now, I can't read Swedish, but I have read some of these stories by Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson in translation both as a child and as an adult.

Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) was a writer of fiction and screenplays but she also wrote children's books. Her most famous creation is Pippi Longstocking, a nine-year-old girl who has superhuman strength!

Photograph of an illustration from Pippi Långstrump by Astrid Lindgren

Pippi was named by Lindgren's then nine-year-old daughter, Karin, who requested a get-well story from her mother one day when she was home sick from school. This interview with Karin in 2015, explains how her mother came up with the stories.

Front cover of Mumintrollet no. 4 by Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson (1914– 2001) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She is best known as the author of the Moomin books for children. The first book in the series, The Moomins and the Great Flood, appeared in 1945; however it was the next two books, Comet in Moominland (1946) and Finn Family Moomintroll (1948) that brought her fame.

In 1951 Finn Family Moomintroll was translated into English. The book's success caught the attention of Charles Sutton, a London agent who offered Jansson a lucrative deal to produce a Moomin comic strip for London's Evening News newspaper. Jansson agreed to produce six strips a week for seven years, starting in 1954. It was an instant hit, reaching up to 20 million readers daily in over 40 countries.

Along with books on the Moomins in Swedish we also have two biographies, The sculptor's daughter: a childhood memoir and Tove Jansson: life, art, words: the authorised biography.

Extract from Mumintrollet by Tove Jansson

Maria Gripe (1923-2007) was an author of books for children and young adults. Although she wrote stories as a child, Gripe did not publish her first book until she was 31. Her first notable success came in the 1960s with a trilogy of books about two school friends, Hugo and Josephine. Over the course of her career, Gripe wrote 38 books, translated into 30 different languages.

Elsa Beskow (1874–1953) was both an author and an illustrator of children's books. As a child, Beskow loved fairy tales and her stories would combine reality with elements of fantasy from fairy tales. Known as the Beatrix Potter of Scandinavia, her illustrations take the reader back to an idyllic, rural Sweden at the turn of the 20th century.

Photograph of the front cover of Sagan om den lilla lilla gumman by Elsa Beskow

Paul Lennart Hellsing (1919–2015) was a writer and translator, particularly known for his nonsense rhymes and word plays. In his books written for children, he experimented with language, playing with words and verb forms. During his career, Hellsing wrote over a hundred books for children and translated and interpreted nearly as many, especially from English.

Photograph of an illustration from Krakel spektakel boken by Lennart Hellsing

To find more books by these authors, along with other material on children's books and illustration, search YorSearch, our Library catalogue.

There is also a small collection of children's literature In the Morrell building. The Peggy Janiurek collection can be found on the first floor, at the end of the Education section. The collection was assembled originally in collaboration with the University's Department of Educational Studies, and named in memory of a former student.

The Library's Special Collections also holds a number of late 18th and 19th century children's literature including books illustrated by Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane among others.

Photograph of the title page of The Golden Staircase : poems and verses for children

Items from the Special Collections can be consulted in the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

The Library has many texts in languages other than English. To find them, search on our Library catalogue and choose the language facets on the left hand side.

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All photographs have been taken by Paul Shields, University photographer.

Home: A time traveller's tales from Britain's prehistory

Digging around the back of his nightshelf, Stephen Town has found another couple of great reads to donate to the Library.

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Pryor, F., Home: A Time Traveller's Tales from Britain's Prehistory in the University Library at EA 2.942 PRY

As many students depart the university, the thoughts of some will turn to home, the subject of my next donation. The author, Francis Pryor, is well-known for his popular writings on archaeology and his appearances on Time Team. We already have most of Pryor’s more academic contributions in the Library, but surprisingly not his ‘Britain BC’ which I found an engaging, readable and informative survey of British prehistory, informed by Pryor’s own field experience on Bronze age sites. I will therefore also add this to my intended donation as this week’s bonus.

Our view of what makes a home has changed over time.
Photo: Making mesolithic tea by Hans Splinter. Used under a Creative Commons license

Pryor's 'Home' covers some similar ground to Britain BC, but from the perspective of the family, their homes and lives. There is an initial focus on Star Carr, the Yorkshire Mesolithic settlement, where the first identifiable British house was built around eleven thousand years ago. Pryor then follows the evidence from other settlements through the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages, taken from sites such as Durrington Walls and Flag Fen. These reveal the sophistication of these earlier times and emphasise the importance of the family and their immediate broader social groups to developing culture.

Pryor’s basic thesis is that family life was a key change agent before the arrival of centralised control (and force) with the Romans. The style is sometimes irritating in this work, but his enthusiasm and polemical fervour enliven the story. Our own Professor Nicky Milner  also receives a prominent acknowledgement.

The Neanderthal's Necklace: In search of the first thinkers

The first in his 'Donating my night shelf' series. Stephen Town talks fossils and frostbite, as he donates The Neanderthal's Necklace to the University Library.

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Arsuaga, J.L. The Neanderthal's Necklace, in the University Library at XY 9.9 ARS

Image courtesy of

Arsuaga, J.L. The Neanderthal's Necklace, 2003

ISBN 0470851570

It is ironic that in the week I decided to retire I also spent one of the most interesting and stimulating days I have experienced in the University. Amanda Rees’ British Academy interdisciplinary workshop on “Excavating Deep History: establishing and circulating knowledge of human origins” assembled an international cast, but also demonstrated a strength of York in bringing together researchers from different disciplines across the University in a fertile exchange. It was also a personal pleasure to be in the same room as Steve Fuller, but more of him in a later blog …

Photo: Bookshop window by
Garry Knight. Reproduced under
a Creative Commons license

Despite the Atapuerca excavations starting in the first year of my professional life as a librarian (1978), my copy of this book was purchased just last winter, when I was escaping a minus eighteen degree blizzard in London, Ontario on a visit to Western University. The most inviting place downtown for a librarian, and to recover from a frozen face, was of course a bookshop; run as I later discovered by one the University’s special collections advisors. As usual, I could not resist at least one purchase, and in the course of the journey home I had read the book.

The Neanderthal’s Necklace provides a mix of science, speculation and intuition, while endeavouring to describe and locate the origins of our common humanity. So, skip forward to the late summer glow of this University’s Lakehouse room, and I could feel like a well prepared student, rather than an interloper, as the workshop moved on to consider how the science and history of human origins has been appropriated at various points by particular vested interests, and how this remains the case today. Oliver Hochadel talked of the way in which Arsuaga and colleagues have gone well beyond the science, to project and communicate the extraordinary hominid finds at Atapuerca as the Spanish foundations of European society.

Photo: Neanderthal skulls by Leted
Reproduced under a Creative Commons license

The seminar itself concluded with a debate about when we became human, and of course this depends on one’s assumptions about what the definition or paradigm of humanity is, and whether this is congruent or not with consciousness. But anyone as fascinated as I am by this topic will find the Neanderthal’s Necklace a stimulating and moving introduction.