A Study of Postmodern Narratives in Writing Fiction for Children and Young Adults

Using postmodern elements in children’s fiction has its own difficulties because the non-experienced audiences of such fiction may not have a clear understanding of these elements and, thus, the process of understanding the story would slow down. Nonetheless, a considerable number of postmodern elements can be detected in Mohammadreza Shams’ and Syamak Gloshiri’s fictions for children: breaks in the plots, creation of alternative worlds, presence of imaginary characters, unreliable narrators, and the willing suspension of disbelief. In order to demonstrate the differences between postmodern and conventional fictions, this study examines Shams’s postmodern fictions, Me, My Stepmom, and My Dad’s Nose, and Me, the Big-Head, and Golshiri’s Tehran, Ghost Alley, using Maria Nikolajeva’s narratological ideas. With her poststructuralist tendencies, Nikolajeva presents the tool that narratology can provide us for the examination of children’s fiction. Simultaneous narration of three stories in Shams’ works and story-within-the-story in Golshiri’s are examples of narrative breaks and gaps. At the end we also witness the opening of a window onto a new story