The study focuses on the necessity of an anthropomorphic approach in deconstructing the symbolic understandings of animals in children's literature, and considers how such an approach can be used to draw ethical attention to the unnatural history of animals in the Anthropocene. The paper analyses three children's novels that depict animals without…

This essay provides much-needed critical attention and historical context to the long-neglected 1924 edition of Gertrude Chandler Warner's "The Box-Car Children." Commonly overshadowed by its more recent and more popular 1942 version--known as "The Boxcar Children"--this earlier edition calls attention to the original cultural…

Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series (2005-2008) and Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" series (2008-2010) have been hugely successful and influential texts, both as best-selling literary works and as action movie franchises. (To avoid confusion, "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" in this essay refer to the…

This article compares the models of subjectivity and identity in William Steig's 1990 picture book "Shrek!" and in DreamWorks' "Shrek" films. Steig presented his ogre hero as a model of the crises of subjectivity all children must face, and then reassured readers by showing how even a hideous figure such as…

The style of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" arises from an alternative vision and choice of values characteristic of romance. Romance seeks fulfillment beyond the consequences of everyday relationships and the constrictions of ordinary life. Causal relationships give way to lists of independent items, unmotivated outcomes, and…

This article provides a close reading of Meg Rosoff's award-winning novel "How I Live Now". It argues that an understanding of the text can be extended through an application of ideas found in contemporary spatial discourse concerning place. Reading the novel within this context allows a discussion of ways in which it draws on…

Viewing Tolstoy's works from psychological and intellectual perspectives demonstrates his approach to children's literacy and especially the development of reasoning, which he presents in his writing for children and the stories he includes in his "New ABC" book (1875a) and four "Readers" (1875b). This article…

This article looks at how four British-based poets born in the Caribbean exploit the rich language repertoire available to them in their work for children and young people. Following initial consideration of questions of definition and terminology, poetry collections by James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols and Valerie Bloom are discussed, with a…

In this study of Jill Paton Walsh's one time-slip novel, I attempt to show how she reinvents the genre by giving as much prominence to the dislocated present as she does to the sufferings of children caught up in the horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Where previous time-slip authors had concentrated on the past, she addresses clearly unwelcome…

Magical realism as a literary mode is often subversive and transgressive, questioning the values and assumptions of the dominant society that it depicts. Young adult literature, by contrast, is typically thought to serve a socializing function, helping to integrate young readers into adult society. What then is the cultural work of magical realism…

A & C Black's "Flashbacks" series invites its readers to "Read a "Flashback"..take a journey backwards in time". There are several ways in which children's fiction has encouraged its readers to engage with and care about history: through the presence of ghosts, through frame stories, time travel, or simply setting the narrative in the past.…

Using his own piece of nonfiction ("Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust") as an example, the author discusses the craft of writing nonfiction and argues that, without craft, books of nonfiction contain nothing but "dead words." (HOD)

Distinguishes between ghost stories and spook stories, arguing that the motivation of the writer of spook stories is to frighten the reader, while the writer of ghost stories is making a serious attempt to find expression for various kinds of psychological experience. (HOD)

Examines evidence that Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, Rose, collaborated with her mother in the writing of the "Little House" books. (HOD)

Relates an "interview" with the prize-winning children's writer, John Christopher, based on a year's correspondence. (HOD)