In her influential work "Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction," Waugh (1984) loosely categorizes literary metafiction on a sliding scale of four metafictional Acts. Through repeated readings of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Carroll & Tenniel, 1866) and study of all of "Wonderland"…

The mysterious and unspoken secrets of life can be a source of fascination for young people. The bildungsroman quest for identity is often coupled with a protagonist's attempts to decode a range of secrets. Jamaica Kincaid's work of fiction, "Annie John" (1985), illustrates this journey. In this novel, the female protagonist's maturity…

Recent biological research (Trewavas, 2003; Mancuso & Viola, 2013; Gagliano, 2018) has (re)demonstrated the variety and complexity of the adaptive behaviour of plants. In parallel with these findings, and in acknowledgement of the important role played by plants in the biosphere and climate of the planet, the representation of plants in…

War, like other stressful situations and experiences, entails a threat to one's subjective well-being, and war fiction for children represents this threat in different ways: some narratives minimise it, and others do not. War fiction, then, provides material for a case study of war and its impact on representations of subjective well-being (SWB),…

YA fiction is well known for a prevalence of narratives that explore identity and identity change. Critics have constructed multiple theoretical frameworks that help put into words the workings of adolescent identity in these novels. This article adds to that discussion by analysing Jacob, the main character of Aidan Chambers' "Postcards from…

This article presents a small case study of two childhood readers of Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, who meet in a research project devoted to a different but related topic. One is Indian by birth and background, the other, Canadian. Their experience of this series is separated by distance (many thousands of miles), time of reading (nearly fifty…

The numerous ecological catastrophes of the twentieth century caused by humans have found their way into mass culture. Among them is the Chornobyl nuclear accident that took place in Ukraine in 1986. This disaster became a subject of reflection not only in Ukrainian literature but also in world films and computer games. Along with other works on…

This article draws on a multi-disciplinary project based on the David Almond archives at Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The project combined archival research, augmented reality (AR) technology, Almond's magical realist writing and experimental workshops to explore whether AR can enhance young…

This article analyses the role of plants in three well publicised Nordic climate fictions for young adults: "Memories of Water" by Emmi Itäranta, originally published in 2012, "The World According to Anna" (2013) by Jostein Gaarder, and "Bouvetøya 2052" (2015) by Lars Maehle. Departing from the wider scholarly field…

The use of metafictive devices in children's literature, in particular contemporary picturebooks, has been explored by numerous scholars working from different theoretical and disciplinary backgrounds. In particular, metafiction is often described as oppositional to traditional children's literature which often produces stable, knowable, readable…

The Great Terror of 1936--1938 and mass deportations of "enemies of the people" between the 1930s and the 1950s are among signature atrocities committed by Stalinist Russia. Claiming the lives of several million Soviet citizens and foreign nationals, these executions and deportations were a silenced topic until the collapse of the Soviet…

This article presents an analysis of a recent, award-winning Swedish novel for children and young adults, "The Murderer's Ape" by Jakob Wegelius, and digitally published reviews of the novel. In the first part of the paper, we provide an intersectional analysis of the novel, focusing on gender, profession, species and class. The…

This literary analysis draws upon navigational identity theory to examine the experiences of female protagonists who choose to play on boys' athletic teams. The study analyzes ten middle grade and young adult novels published between 2005 and 2017 to explore the question, How are the female protagonists represented in the navigation of changing…

While there has been a multitude of studies of "Harry Potter" since its first appearance, including studies analyzing individual characters, social classes in the wizarding world, and a number that examine the "'Harry Potter' phenomenon" as a whole, there are none that systematically analyze and compare the characters in terms…

Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" (2009) charts the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who is adopted by supernatural entities in the local graveyard after his family is murdered. This article draws on the notion of the "construed reader," and combines two cognitive stylistic frameworks to analyse the opening section of the novel.…