Selective (Un)Telling of Difficult Knowledge of U.S. Wars in Children’s Literature: The Korean War as a Case Study

Abstract

This article discusses how the Korean War is portrayed in the children’s literature published in the United States over 70 years since the war. Seven children’s books were identified and analyzed with a theoretical lens of teaching war as difficult knowledge. Critical content analysis of the texts found two key patterns. First, there were various accounts on the war across the texts, including the Korean War as a human/animal suffering, U.S. benevolent mission, animal heroism, and unfinished war. Second, difficult knowledge of the war was selectively in/excluded in the texts. The unanimously included difficult knowledge was wartime suffering, whereas the unanimously excluded was U.S. implication in the suffering. The findings suggest a critical use of the texts to engage children in learning about and from the difficult knowledge of the war. The findings also indicate pedagogical possibility and limitation of children’s literature for teaching difficult knowledge of war.

Keywords:

• Korean War
• children’s literature
• teaching about war
• difficult knowledge