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…

Britain's Children's Laureate Scheme has now been running for 14 years. This article asks Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, Anthony Browne, Michael Rosen and Julia Donaldson for their views on their own experience of taking up this post. It concludes with a discussion of the recurring issues raised by these…

In this article the Viking motif in children's literature is explored--from its roots in (adult) nationalist and antiquarian discourse, over pedagogical and historical texts for children, to the eventual diversification (or dissolution) of the motif into different genres and forms. The focus is on Swedish Viking narratives, but points of…

This article explores the constructions of class in British girls' school stories. Feminist scholarship has, to some extent, reclaimed the school story, pointing to the widening of acceptable gender roles for female characters in girls' school stories, compared to their counterparts in mixed-gender stories, and indeed real life. While…

This article examines the political polarization between Republicans and Islamists in Turkey as reflected in the peritexts of recent translations of world children's literature. This is reflected in terms of van Dijk's notions of an us vs them binarism, where a positive in-group is opposed to a negative out-group representation. In this…

This paper examines the work of one of New Zealand's most acclaimed writers, Maurice Gee, and the use of his children's fiction as an experimental ground for postmodernist techniques further developed in his writing for adults. In particular, it considers Gee's borrowings of his own and others' non-fictional and fictional…

This article examines anti-racist strategies employed in Finnish children's literature. The examples from four stories illustrate that certain physical characteristics and cultural markers can become strong signifiers of nationality, that is Finnishness. The characters in these stories have to cope with experiences of exclusion and loneliness…

This essay examines how John Dewey's child-centered educational philosophy was adopted and adapted in the early twentieth century in China to create a Chinese children's literature. Chinese intellectuals applied Dewey's educational philosophy, which values children's interests and needs, to formulate a new concept of modern…

Histories of the First World War have regularly implicated children's literature in boys' eagerness to enlist in the first two years of that conflict. While undoubtedly the majority of children's books, comics and magazines did espouse nationalistic, jingoistic and martial attitudes, there were alternative stories and environments. Looking at the…

This paper considers how "knowledge" of China was presented for Victorian and Edwardian children in "The Boy's Own Paper" ("BOP") between 1879 and 1914. It considers how genre affects the representation of China in the "BOP" by comparing travel narratives and adventure stories. First, it focuses on non-fiction about China, examining the rhetorical…

This paper examines two Canadian (Quebecois) novels for young adults, translated from French to English in Canada: "The Road to Chlifa" by Michele Marineau, and "Pieces of Me" by Charlotte Gingras. We examine the representation of adolescent bodies in space and movement, and how these coming of age narratives play out in relation to discourses…

This article demonstrates, through Michael Gascoigne's "Tunzi the Faithful Shadow" (1988), that literature for children is sometimes employed by the government into the service of propagating dominant state ideologies in Zimbabwean schools. Such texts disseminate issues of inclusion and exclusion that characterise all nation building projects. I…

This study identifies patterns in 11 English language young adult novels from the past three decades (1981-2011) which depict undocumented migration between Mexico and the United States. The increase in YA novels on this topic demonstrates rising public concern. These books offer sympathetic identification with border crossing youth. Eight of the…

In this article, the author explores the richly layered double text of Kushner and Sendak's picturebook, "Brundibar" (2003)--the historical context of "Brundibar" as a Holocaust-era children's operetta by Hans Krasa and Adolf Hoffmeister, and the present day manifestation of "Brundibar" as a children's picturebook. In order to contextualize the…

New immigrants and their children need to develop the ability to reconcile perceived dissonances between the worldviews of their parents and grandparents and those of their peers. This pursuit is made more difficult when they find that their newly adopted homeland misrepresents their cultural heritage. This article examines the historical…