Petit Fiston and L'écuyère by Elzbieta: the Life Course of two children from the margins in contemporary children's books
Abstract
In her last two published illustrated books, L'écuyère (2011) and Petit fiston (2013), Elzbieta traces with a profoundly renewed formal structure the chaotic paths of two children from the margins of society, victims of abandonment and family violence and exposed to the implacable mechanisms of social exclusion. The first is undoubtedly the author's most autobiographical.
We will analyse the initiatory dimension of these two stories in which the construction of the identity of the two heroes, the choice of an adoptive family, the affirmation of a vocation and a life choice are affirmed. They reflect the child's intimacy and imagination thanks in particular to a network of highly symbolic images, such as the the birds in Petit fiston, which we will study in greater detail