The early reception of D.B.C. Pierre's "Vernon God Little" (2003) has been characterized by comparisons with two canonical literary antecedents: J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" (1991/1951) and, at a greater remove, Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884). The three novels capitalize on the…

This article analyses a selection of contemporary children's visual texts (for economy and specificity 'contemporary' is taken to mean the current century), covering a cross-section of age demographics to better understand how the texts depict female characters suffering with mental illness. It examines these primary texts not only to see how such…

This article examines the place occupied by maps in children's picturebooks. After a brief overview of the different roles that are assigned to maps in children's books, the article considers five French picturebooks--Warja Lavater's "Le petit chaperon rouge" (1965), Olivier Douzou and Isabelle Simon's "L'autobus numéro 33"…

In 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing in the Bahamas was simultaneously celebrated and denounced in the US. Damaging facts about Columbus and the impact of his voyages were aired along with demands for truth and change. This study analyzes the power relationships and political ideology of picturebooks about Columbus published…

Narrative embedding is a common narrative structural device. Genette (1980, 1988) distinguished among various diegetic levels to explain the discrete narrative levels in embedded narratives and he defined metalepsis as the deliberate disturbing or breaking of narrative boundaries. Metalepsis, described by Malina (2002) as a mutinous narrative…

As a narrative series, Brandon Sanderson's humorous, middle grade, Alcatraz Smedry novels display some of the arguably vague concepts of Reader Response theorist Wolfgang Iser as accessible themes that encourage a critical understanding of the stories. "Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians" (2007), "Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones" (2008) and…

In this article, the authors examine three Canadian coming-of-age stories, written as graphic novels, and pay particular attention to how the images and print text come together in the telling of the narrative. This approach reinforces the notion that form and content cannot be separated in this medium. Drawing on examples from each of the graphic…

This article compares the first-person narratives of two adolescent girls in the novels "The Rain Catchers" and "The House on Mango Street". I propose that adolescent girls can use literacy to read the world around them as a text and therefore help them to form their own identities enough to ultimately find authority in telling their own stories.…

Mary Norton's "The Borrowers" has a complicated narrative framework, through which the story of the small people, the Borrowers, is told. Once we find that the embedded story is carefully set at the turn of the nineteenth century, parallels with Burnett's "The Secret Garden" are recognized, in which a lonely Anglo-Indian child experiences some…

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, "Black and White" (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee's choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: "that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a…

This article intervenes in the debate about the pedagogical import of Heinrich Hoffmann's Der Struwwelpeter. Should this book be regarded as a typical example of black pedagogy or as a form of subversive children's literature? I argue in favour of the latter point of view, on the basis of a close reading of the interaction between words and…

Explores what effects pictures have on the concepts of immediate-engaging, distant-engaging, and distancing first-person narration. Considers how a pictorialized (as opposed to an illustrated) narrative involves different dynamics of engagement than a purely verbal narrative. (SG)

Since Asperger's Syndrome was formally recognised in 1994, several novels featuring characters with the syndrome have appeared. Bill Greenwell's article discusses these books in providing a context for a closer consideration of the British publishing sensation of 2003, Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." The reasons…

Considers how in the fantasy series "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "His Dark Materials," by C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman respectively, the authors use symbols and themes from "Paradise Lost." Notes that each author's narrative choice uses his view of cosmic order to persuade readers that obedience should be…

Examines the parallels in the narrative framework of Mary Norton and Emily Bronte. (HOD)