Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Children's Literature in Education, 2026 (AHCI, Scopus)
The aim of this study is to examine the function of metafiction techniques in children’s literature through the children’s books Chester and Bear Hunt and to reveal how they affect the meaning-making world of children. In the stories, the heroes break the author’s fictional control through the technique of metafiction, disrupting the flow of the narrative and shaping the course of the story according to their own desires. For this reason, the stories offer productive examples for examining metafictional narrative technique. The study employs document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods. The purposeful sampling method was chosen for the research, and works featuring characters that change the course of events were selected. These characters stand out as figures who direct the course of the narrative with the pen in their hand. In the book Chester, the character damages the author’s traditional authority by making changes to both the visual and literary components of the text with a red pen. In the work Bear Hunt, the character collaborates with the author to transform the text and reconstruct the fictional universe. In both books, attention is drawn to the questioning of the author’s authority and the idea that the text is not a fixed and unchanging structure. This situation allows readers to question the deep structure of the text and understand the narrative in a critical way. As a result, it has been found that both works, through their use of metafictional techniques, increase the level of interaction between young readers and the text, encouraging them to actively participate in the meaning-making process. Furthermore, it allows young readers not only to follow the text but also to gain the courage to transform and reconstruct it. This highlights once again the pedagogical significance of postmodern children’s books. Metafictional techniques highlight the pedagogical significance of postmodern children’s books in developing critical thinking skills and awareness of agency in young readers.