Children, Charity and Magazines
A Q&A with the author of Philanthropy in Children’s Periodicals, 1840–1930: The Charitable Child.
Young Adults & War
How can literature for young adults and children help to foster lasting positive social change?
An extract from “Wasted Innocence: Children and Childhood in Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber”
by Xiaofei Shi and Labao Wang Does Chinese children’s literature have a prehistory? While it is presumptuous to date the history of Chinese children’s literature all the way back to the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420) when the tale ‘Li Ji’…
Reading the War on Terror in Moroccan Picture Books
By Sara Austin and Ann Wainscott We met at New Faculty Orientation in 2018. Sara was seated across a large round table from me, and during introductions she mentioned that she was a scholar of children’s literature. I immediately mentioned…
The Appeal of the Fantastic and the Improbable in Late Eighteenth Century Children’s Literature: Part Three
By Maryam Khorasani and Hossein Nazari Read part 2 of the blog series. Maria Edgeworth’s Lucky Orphans As the century moved forward, the belief in the rags-to-riches narratives gradually started to give way to the significance of retaining social hierarchies,…
The Appeal of the Fantastic and the Improbable in Late Eighteenth Century Children’s Literature: Part Two
By Maryam Khorasani and Hossein Nazari Read part 1 of this blog series. Much Ado about Witchcraft in The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes Often cited as the earliest example of a children’s novel, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes[i],…
Cute Ecologies: Beatrix Potter, Mushrooms and Miniature Worlds
Once known primarily as the author of ‘twee’ children’s books about fastidious mice and naughty rabbits, Beatrix Potter has gained recognition in recent years for her wide-ranging accomplishments as a conservationist, mycologist and scientific illustrator. In the 1890s, before embarking…
Intergenerational Desire in/and Children’s Literature
It is with some trepidation, but also with a great sense of urgency, that we present a modest collection of excursions into the representation of intergenerational desire in children’s literature. For it is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who…
Children’s Gothic Fiction – Top 10 Must Reads
By Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley While researching my forthcoming book, Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic, I have read a lot of scary stories written for children and young adults. Although the Gothic has always been part of children’s literature, it has exploded in…