THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN CHILDREN’S STORY – STJEPAN LICE AND SONJA TOMIĆ

The aim of this paper 1 is to explore some of the ways in which Christian values are present in contemporary Croatian children’s stories. Contemporary Croatian children’s literature is extremely diverse. However, Christianity has been immanent in Croatian children’s literature from the very beginning and has engaged with contemporary children’s stories through various creative processes. One of the contemporary approaches to Christian themes in Croatian children’s literature will be presented, analyzing the works of the Croatian writers Sonja Tomić and Stjepan Lice. Their stories are inspired by biblical themes, motifs, and forms such as parables, the stories of rich symbolic relationships and strong messages in which Jesus Christ speaks in a vivid and understandable way about ordinary things, elevating them to the level of timeless meaning, thus pointing to correlations between the everyday world, spiritual reality, and the Kingdom of God. Sonja Tomić and Stjepan Lice approach these biblical themes through contemporary narrative concepts of children’s literature and bring the original, complex way of Christ’s teaching closer to the children’s world and the potential experience of religiosity as it applies to children.