The article draws on the concept of Law & Literature. The aim of the research is to indicate how the formation of the image of childhood changes in three laws on education from 1918—2018: The Act of 11 March 1932 on the education system, the Act of 15 July 1961 on the development of the education and upbringing system and the Act of September 1991 on the education system. The author analyzes to what extent the child in the above-mentioned legal acts is treated in an objective manner, and to what extent in a subjective manner. Using axiolinguistics, she tries to prove that the image of childhood inscribed in each of the texts is connected with the ideological aims of the authorities and their conception of the state. This thesis is related to the various regimes that prevailed in the Polish lands in the indicated century.

Alicja Baluch discusses recent developments in Polish small children’s literature on the basis of books submitted to the Yellow Ciżemka Award in literature, which has been awarded by the Krakow Library since 2017. Baluch emphasizes that among the entrants are many young authors, including graphic designers and illustrators, who are making their debut. The works she analyses are dominated by visual over verbal methods of narration as well as the forms of picture book and toy book. Among the new solutions, in both verbal and pictorial narratives, particularly noticeable are the interactive motifs of traces, threads, and canvases.

Małgorzata Figura’s article is an attempt to capture the social roles of children when faced with the threat of the impending climate catastrophe. The introduction aims to draw attention to the need to give the floor to young people who can alert the public to changes taking place in the world. This necessity is stressed by researchers who represent children’s studies and who emphasize the importance of children’s perspective in literature and in scientific and social discourses. Figura’s analysis of selected literary texts allows us to see this turn towards the child, which at the same time is also the child’s turn towards nature.

Social activism is a way of acting whose aim is to bring about specific changes. The movement is increasingly popular among children, who have a growing understanding of large-scale phenomena and are increasingly aware of their agency. The aim of this article is to conduct an overview of the phenomenon of children’s social activism and to analyse the activities undertaken by children activists in an educational-literary interdisciplinary project carried out by early school-age children. The project addresses the topic of literary education and implements new initiatives to increase reading and ecological knowledge.

The main purpose of Helena Barbara Balcerek’s article is to present an original project aimed at the amplification of both the language potential (communication competences) and the literary-cultural potential of sixth-grade primary-school students. The project’s method consists in problem-based learning which integrates literary-cultural content-oriented teaching and language education (including rhetoric) with educational and prosocial processes. Reflections yielded by an in-depth analysis and interpretation of texts used in the project as well as discussions concerning the problem of human values and needs lead, as it turned out during the project’s execution, to ecological issues and climate challenges facing the contemporary world. A large group of students have come up with practical ideas as to the use of available resources as means to resolve the climate crisis and to undertake pro-ecological actions.

The paper focuses on working with philosophical literary stories, which by their nature, in addition to the development of children’s thinking can be useful in developing awareness of nature protection and sustainable living. Attitudes in solving environmental problems are related to education in the past, present and future. The inspiration for writing this paper is the educational program Philosophy for Children. The application part of this program includes several activities — reading philosophical stories, questions creating, philosophical discussion and other complementary activities. We consider Philosophy for Children as a form of applied philosophy, focused on the area of practical human interests.

The article is a reflection on working with a literary text during Polish as a foreign language lessons, where contact with the work is primarily used to learn the language. It is important to improve students’ writing and text-forming competencies. The author presents conceptualizations of childhood in selected texts, which were created as a result of creative transformational exercises based on the poem by Zbigniew Herbert. Finally, she presents considerations about students with migration experience and their educational needs. The author suggests the usefulness of the described method when working with such a target group, and the need to combine the experience of teaching Polish as a native language and a foreign language.

The article is an attempt to describe selected books by Justyna Bednarek, a wellknown and award-winning children’s writer (Nowe przygody skarpetek (jeszcze bardziej niesamowite) [New adventures of socks (Even more amazing)], Basik Grysik i wrony [Basik Grysik and crows], Pan Stanisław odlatuje [Mr Stanisław flies away]). The researcher focuses primarily on problems related to the way Bednarek represents human relations with the world. Wójcik-Dudek proves that in Bednarek’s work, thread and its literal and symbolic meanings have the strongest frequency in presenting a man entangled in the world.

Małgorzata Ewa Chrobak’s aim in this article is to read Justyna Bednarek’s books for children from the perspective of “thing studies.” Chrobak investigates how everyday objects and their re-use are represented in a selection of those books, e.g., Nowe przygody skarpetek (jeszcze bardziej niesamowite) [The Socks’ New Adventures (More Amazing Than Ever)]; Banda Czarnej Frotté [The Band of the Black Frotté]; Skarpetki powracają! [The Socks Are Back!]; Zielone piórko Zbigniewa [Zbigniew’s Green Feather]; Skarpetki kontratakują! [The Socks Strike Back!]. Chrobak examines the possibilities of applying two interpretive categories to Bednarek’s fiction, those of “biography of things” and “cultural recycling.”

The article is devoted to the linguistic and cultural image of the heroine of Justyna Bednarek's novel entitled Babcocha. The story’s heroine was compared to the stereotype of a witch, which was recreated from children’s conceptualizations (of children in younger schoolage). The comparison of the two images indicates a significant modification of the image created by Justyna Bednarek and these aspects of the protagonist and the world represented, which may encourage the child to read the text.

Among Polish books in the genre of children’s literature, there are many that do not refrain from taking up difficult topics, ones which are burdened with a heavy emotional charge. Among such books are numerous stories about the Holocaust. These stories provide an opportunity to work through traumatic emotions and, at the same time, open the field for reflection on the shaping of socially desirable moral attitudes among young readers and on the mediating role of adults in the reading process. This article analyzes selected works representing this genre as attempts to overcome the dominant convention of happy endings in children’s literature. Anna Sałatarow also attempts to define the consequences of the unhappy or open endings in stories for young readers.

Alicja Mazan-Mazurkiewicz’s aim in this article is to show the richness and variety of poetical implementations of culinary themes in children’s poetry as represented by Joanna Kulmowa, Joanna Papuzińska, Zofia Beszczyńska, and Agnieszka Kuciak. Mazan-Mazurkiewicz wants to emphasise how a topic that is close to the child and somehow obvious makes it possible for the receiver to be themselves poetically creative and offers them an aesthetic experience as well as an initiation (often unconscious) into the processes of artistic creation, involving humour, metaphor, synaesthesia, and retardation.

Comics for children are a significant part of the book market, not only in Poland. These titles are important because they prepare young readers for active participation in culture. The article’s author analyzed and interpreted in detail the most recent Polish comic books addressed to the youngest readers regarding animalistic themes. First, he divided the selected works into two groups: those in which animals accompany humans and those in which animals are the main characters (classic and hybrid, combining comics with other forms of expression). The researcher cited examples such as: Którędy do Yellowstone? Dzika podróż po parkach narodowych [Which way to Yellowstone? A wild journey through the national parks] (Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińscy), the series “Umarły las” [Dead forest] (Adam Wajrak, Tomasz Samojlik), “Detektyw
Miś Zbyś na tropie” [Detective Zbyś the Bear on the trail] (Maciej Jasiński and Piotr Nowacki) and “Rysiek i Królik” [Rysiek and Królik] (Łukasz Piotrkowicz, Krzysztof Budziejewski, Katarzyna Urbaniak). When presenting selected works, the author uses the approaches of Polish comics researchers (Wojciech Birek, Jerzy Szyłak, Michał Traczyk), but he also refers to the researchers specializing in Animal Studies (Anna Wąs, Piotr Skubała, Mirosław Twardowski). The article is a review of various formal solutions utilized by the authors (cards, stylistics of frames, genre hybrids).

In his article, Dariusz Żółtowski discusses the situation of the school in the contemporary world. He looks closely at reading in the context of the developing economization of reality. He suggests linking the conclusions provided by anthropology of culture and philosophy in the traditional school.