Att förhålla sig till ovisshet i litteraturundervisningen. Litteraturdidaktiska perspektiv på Linda Bondestams klimatbilderbok Mitt bottenliv

Children’s literature on environmental matters puts great
responsibility on its readers to solve future environmental problems.
Similarly, in an educational context, there are underlying premises that
the students should be fostered into environmental awareness, at the risk
of climate fiction solely becoming “teaching aids”, providing clear-cut
solutions to the climate crisis. In this article, I seek to address these premises
by analysing Linda Bondestam’s climate picturebook Mitt bottenliv: Av
en ensam axolotl (My Life at the Bottom: The Story of a Lonesome Axolotl,
2020) in relation to literary education. In Bondestam’s picturebook, human
consumerism causes an apocalypse but an endangered axolotl survives
and thrives. The aim of the article is to discuss the complexity of Mitt
bottenliv in relation to literary education. In the analysis, the key concepts
are ”didactic gaps” (Beauvais) and ”staying with the trouble” (Haraway).
The article explores what it can entail to stay with the trouble in relation
to uncertainty in literary education. Mitt bottenliv can hardly be said to
provide clear-cut solutions for the climate crisis. Rather, the complexity of the
picturebook creates an ambiguity in the didactic gaps, and an uncertainty to
be managed within the context of literary education. This ambiguity enables
the reader to stay with the trouble in relation to the picturebook as well as the
environmental troubles we are facing, without placing the responsibility of
the future upon the reader. Consequently, the article draws attention to the
potential of complex picturebooks in literary education, as well as to literary
education as a means of managing uncertainty.