Nostalgia in Historical Picturebooks about People on the Move

Although nostalgia is more typically associated with older audiences than children, picturebooks are not without nostalgic themes. Narratives that feature objects and events connected to childhood have the ability to evoke nostalgia in readers. This effect is particularly evident among adults who mediate the reading experience to young children, as they often undergo “internal nostalgia”, in which the nostalgic individual reflects on her own past (Salmose 2012: 128–136). When picturebooks reconstruct and present past eras, such as depictions of life in classical antiquity, they evoke “historical nostalgia”, which, in contrast to “cultural nostalgia” for utopian spaces (Santesso 2006: 81), is reserved for historical spaces and times (95–96). This form of “external nostalgia” that pertains to a longing not tied to one’s personal past (Salmose 2012: 137–143) is often referred to as the “armchair nostalgia” (Appadurai 1996), because it emerges as people, seated comfortably in their armchairs, reflect on the past without actively engaging with it or having lived through it.The theme of this special issue of Libri & Liberi was the topic of the conference People on the Move and Nostalgia in Historical Picturebooks, organised by the Department of Early Childhood Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, from 24 to 25 September 2022, in Agios Nikolaos, Crete.