This article examines the connections between posthumanism and narrative form in Philip Pullman's "Clockwork." Beginning with an account of Pullman's materialism, it argues that the novel represents consciousness and agency as emergent properties of matter, a position that manifests itself first in the tale's figurative language and later in the…

This article considers Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" as a text which utilises key codes and conventions of children's literature as a means of encountering the trauma of Fascism. The article begins by placing "Pan's Labyrinth" at a contextual crossroads involving fairy tale and a Spanish cinematic tradition and considers the significance…

This essay examines the representation of adolescent girlhood, sexual violence and agency in Francesca Lia Block's contemporary fairy tale collection "The Rose and The Beast." Focusing specifically on the tale "Wolf," the author provides a literary analysis of how Block draws on and reworks traditional Western fairy tale variants to reintroduce…

The Canadian young adult novel "The Maestro" by Tim Wynne-Jones foregrounds the relationship between imagination and subjective agency. While Burl uses his imagination at the beginning to protect himself from his abusive father, his fantasies become dress rehearsals for small performances that allow him to try on new identities and exercise…

Reconstructed fairy tales provide a different point of view and challenge the assumptions of a common set of values; for that reason, these stories provide a medium in which to examine power relationships in texts by applying a critical multicultural analysis (Botelho & Rudman, forthcoming, 2008, "A critical multicultural analysis of children's…

To compensate for her feelings of anger and helplessness over her mother's abandonment and subsequent displacements, the foster child Gilly Hopkins seeks power and agency through the primary means at her disposal: through the use of language and fairy tales. She constructs a Cinderella fantasy of an idealized mother who will rescue her. She also…

This article explores how Sandra Cisneros alludes to and recasts popular fairy tales in "The House on Mango Street" to reveal their troubled legacy in the lives of many women in the novel. Drawing upon Latina feminist theory and Cisneros's autobiographical writing, this article posits that the main character Esperanza's alternative "happily ever…

While stories with a depressing message are now common for teenagers, resistance to them remains where smaller children are concerned. But is this more a case of the publishers and providers concerned protecting their own particular image of childhood? This article looks at the case for books that also convey a sense of sadness to infants,…

This paper sketches a "map" of certain patterns in current children's fantasy. Beginning with literal maps of fantasy worlds, I point out the similarities of the physical layout of a number of invented worlds, suggesting that sameness of geography often indicates a lack of innovation in the ideological or philosophical ideas behind the stories.…

In this article, it is shown how authors of fairy tale retellings have incorporated ideas of feminist literary criticism into a fictional form. As such, these retellings display the tension between the pedagogic and aesthetic aspects of all children's literature. Jane Yolen's "Sleeping Ugly" is chosen as a case study: although it can be argued…

The centenary of the first performance of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan was celebrated in December 2004. Taking account of the various events in Britain to mark the occasion--newspaper articles, radio and television programmes, retrospects in the original theatre--this article examines the status and popularity of Peter Pan after a hundred years. The…

This article considers the cultural messages embedded in the patriarchal canon of fairy tales and their implications for the construction of gender-appropriate behavior. The characteristics of feminist re-visions of fairy tales are discussed, and studies that explore the importance of access to alternative discourses in order for children to…

The question this article addresses is: Is "Artemis" art? That is, how successful is Eoin Colfer's attempt to combine disparate forms, such as fairy stories, science fiction stories and thrillers in the three "Artemis Fowl" novels? Basic elements of story, such as narrative stance, characterisation and plot, as well as some particularly…

Documents the author's interpretation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden." Explores a series of questions dealing with issues such as sight, speech, power, gender construction, and symbolism. Reveals the positive and potent ways women subvert the hegemony of patriarchal society and the celebration of the divine feminine within "The…

Considers how translations of indigenous folktales form a large proportion of South African children's books. Notes that at first those who published them were influenced by Social Darwinism, and later the folktales played a role in promoting the ideology of apartheid, but they were mainly the product of white paternalism. Notes that the folktales…