To write for children, and to write well : Protestant mission presses and the development of children’s literature in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century China

This article uses a new historicist approach to examine the complexrelationships between translators, writers, and missionary publishersin China, and their financial supporters in the United States and Britainto demonstrate how they influenced the development of Chinese children’sliterature. It focuses on the case of the American Presbyterian MissionPress, Chinese Religious Tract Society, and Christian Literature Societyfor China, publishers of many texts for children. The article argues thatthe Western mission presses shaped Chinese children’s literature in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth century by introducing new narrativesthrough translation, highlighting the importance of including visual imagesin children’s texts by importing electrotypes and lithographic printsfrom the United States and Britain, and training Chinese students in newengraving and printing techniques which enabled them to establish theirown publishing houses.

Low health-related quality of life in school-aged children in Tonga, a lower-middle income country in the South Pacific

Background:
Ensuring a good life for all parts of the population, including children, is high on the public health agenda in most countries around the world. Information about children’s perception of their health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and its socio-demographic distribution is, however, limited and almost exclusively reliant on data from Western higher income countries.

Objectives:
To investigate HRQoL in schoolchildren in Tonga, a lower income South Pacific Island country, and to compare this to HRQoL of children in other countries, including Tongan children living in New Zealand, a high-income country in the same region.

Design:
A cross-sectional study from Tonga addressing all secondary schoolchildren (11–18 years old) on the outer island of Vava’u and in three districts of the main island of Tongatapu (2,164 participants). A comparison group drawn from the literature comprised children in 18 higher income and one lower income country (Fiji). A specific New Zealand comparison group involved all children of Tongan descendent at six South Auckland secondary schools (830 participants). HRQoL was assessed by the self-report Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0.

Results:
HRQoL in Tonga was overall similar in girls and boys, but somewhat lower in children below 15 years of age. The children in Tonga experienced lower HRQoL than the children in all of the 19 comparison countries, with a large difference between children in Tonga and the higher income countries (Cohen’s d 1.0) and a small difference between Tonga and the lower income country Fiji (Cohen’s d 0.3). The children in Tonga also experienced lower HRQoL than Tongan children living in New Zealand (Cohen’s d 0.6).

Conclusion:
The results reveal worrisome low HRQoL in children in Tonga and point towards a potential general pattern of low HRQoL in children living in lower income countries, or, alternatively, in the South Pacific Island countries.

Editorial

In this issue of Papers we farewell Gillian Adams from our Advisory Committee. Gillian has been a referee since 2001, and she has resigned
because she plans to concentrate on ancient and medieval literature for children and thus will not be able to maintain her practice of reading
contemporary material. We thank Gillian for her interest in Papers and for her insightful reviewing of essays submitted for publication, and we wish her well for her ventures into ancient and medieval material, on which she has already published several notable essays.

Critical fictions

This thesis draws on feminist theory from the sciences and the humanities to analyse dystopian literature for children and adults. It demonstrates that fiction plays a critical role in understanding how subjectivity and coporeality is implicated in the directions that new science is taking.

An examination of the association between interviewer question type and story-grammar detail in child witness interviews about abuse

Objective : This study compared the effects of open-ended versus specific questions, and various types of open-ended questions, in eliciting story-grammar detail in child abuse interviews.
Methods : The sample included 34 police interviews with child witnesses aged 5–15 years (M age = 9 years, 9 months). The interviewers’ questions and their relative sub-types were classified according to definitions reported in the child interview training literature. The children's responses were classified according to the proportion of story grammar and the prevalence of individual story grammar elements as defined by Stein and Glenn (1979).
Results : Open-ended questions were more effective at eliciting story grammar than specific questions. This finding was revealed across three age groups, two interview phases and irrespective of how question effectiveness was measured. However, not all types of open-ended questions were equally effective. Open-ended questions that encouraged a broad response, or asked the child to elaborate on a part of their account, elicited more story-grammar detail compared to open-ended questions that requested clarification of concepts or descriptions of the next (or another) activity or detail within a sequence.
Conclusions : This study demonstrates that children's ability to provide story-grammar detail is maximised when there is minimal prompting from the interviewer.
Practical implications : Given the association between story grammar production and victim credibility, greater guidance is warranted in interviewer training programs in relation to the effects and administration of different types of open-ended questions.

China in a book: Victorian representations of the 'celestial kingdom' in William Dalton’s 'The wolf boy of China'

Despite the wealth of material related to China in Victorian and Edwardian children’s literature, relatively few scholarly works have been published on the subject. Critics who have discussed the topic have tended to emphasize the negative discourse and stereotypical images of the Chinese in late nineteenth-century children’s literature. I use the case of William Dalton’s The Wolf Boy of China (1857), one of the earliest full-length Victorian children’s novels set in China, to complicate previous generalizations about negative representations of China and the Chinese and to highlight the unpredictable nature of child readers’ reactions to a text. First, in order to trace the complicated process of how information about the country was disseminated, edited, framed, and translated before reaching Victorian and Edwardian readers, I analyse how Dalton wove fragments from his reading of a large archive of texts on China into his novel.
Although Dalton may have preserved and transmitted some ‘factual’ information about China from his sources, he also transformed material that he read in innovative ways. These are reflected in the more subversive and radical parts of the novel, which are discussed in the second part of the essay. In the final section, I provide examples of historical readers of The Wolf Boy of China to challenge the notion that children passively accept the imperialist messages in books of empire.

A global sense of place: geography and sustainability education in a primary context

In this paper, I draw on Massey's conceptualisation of space and place and literature on children's geographies to argue for the importance of "a global sense of place" (Massey, 1991, p. 29) in geography (and sustainability) education. Reporting on interviews with six Victorian primary teaSustainability educationhers' and their conceptions and perceptions of geography, I contend that place in their imagining is commonly represented as bounded, contained and static. This is in contrast to Massey's understanding of place as immersed in global networks/processes, a product of interrelations and continuously changing. I conclude this paper by presenting an example of a primary unit that provides opportunities for students to develop an outward sense of place; one which foregrounds the interconnections and interdependence of places and processes.

Reading race, aboriginality in Australian children`s literature

This text looks at the ways in which Australia's indigenous peoples have been, and continue to be, represented in books for children. These varying representations have helped to colour the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions of different generations of Australians.

Children's body image concerns and eating disturbance: a review of the literature

In recent years a large number of studies have examined body image concerns, and early symptoms of eating disturbance among children. However, to date there has been no synthesis or evaluation of these studies. The purpose of the present article is to review and evaluate the research that has examined body image concerns, and eating attitudes and behaviors among children 6 to 11 years of age. The instruments used to assess body image concerns and eating disturbance in children closely resemble those used with adolescents and adults. Overall, the psychometric data for these instruments are very good and there is sufficient evidence indicating that they can be used reliably and validly. In addition, similar variables to those studied in adolescent and adult samples have been found to be associated with children's body image concerns and early eating disturbance. These include gender, age, body mass index, race, sociocultural pressures, and self-concept. Our understanding of the development of body image concerns and eating disturbance in children is limited, however, by the fact that most of the research in this field has been based on cross-sectional data, and the studies have focused almost exclusively on weight-loss cognitions and behaviors.

Strategies which aim to positively impact on weight, physical activity, diet and sedentary behaviours in children from zero to five years. A systematic review of the literature

Preventing the development of obesity in children is an international health priority. To assess the effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent obesity, promote healthy eating and/or physical activity and/or to reduce sedentary behaviours in 0–5-year-old children, a systematic review of the literature was performed. Literature searches were limited to articles published between January 1995 and June 2006, printed in English and sampling children aged 0–5-years. Searches excluded literature concerned with breastfeeding, eating disorders, and interventions which were school-based or concerned with obesity treatment. Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed study strengths and weaknesses. Nine included studies were grouped based on the settings in which they were delivered. Most studies involved multi-approach interventions, were conducted in the USA and varied in study designs and quality. All showed some level of effectiveness on at least one obesity-behaviour in young children. These studies support, at a range of levels, the premise that parents are receptive to and capable of some behavioural changes that may promote healthy weight in their young children. The small quantity of research heralds the need, particularly given the potential for early intervention to have long-lasting impacts on individual and population health, to build in a substantial way upon this evidence base.