In her influential work "Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction," Waugh (1984) loosely categorizes literary metafiction on a sliding scale of four metafictional Acts. Through repeated readings of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Carroll & Tenniel, 1866) and study of all of "Wonderland"…

This article offers a reading of Kate Darbishire's novel Speechless Stickhouse Publishing, London, 2018), following Harriet, a girl with cerebral palsy. It examines her irritation, born of her resentful awareness of her disability, as well as how she grapples with her life as an ordinary schoolgirl. The novel presents Harriet as an everyday child,…

Theodore Taylor's "The Cay" received a great deal of criticism upon its publication in 1969 for its racism, yet it has remained in American public school curricula for over fifty years. Defenders of the novel have argued that it advocates for color-blindness, a position that has helped entrench it in schools. Meanwhile, few critics have…

Recent biological research (Trewavas, 2003; Mancuso & Viola, 2013; Gagliano, 2018) has (re)demonstrated the variety and complexity of the adaptive behaviour of plants. In parallel with these findings, and in acknowledgement of the important role played by plants in the biosphere and climate of the planet, the representation of plants in…

In Karen McManus's first three young adult novels--"One of Us is Lying" (2017), "One of Us is Next" (2020), and "Two Can Keep a Secret" (2019)--dead teen bodies are literary cyphers around which adolescent characters learn to navigate intersectional injustices. McManus fulfills John Charles belief that all…

This paper looks at the evolution of the girl's school story in "The British Girl's Annual" during the interwar period. The school story played a crucial role instructing young female readers about their gendered role within the school as a kind of microcosm for nation/empire. Most of these lessons focus on loyalty and leadership, topics…

This article highlights the interpictorality in two YA books by the Swedish writer and illustrator Anna Höglund, "Om detta talar man endast med kaniner" [This Is Something You Only Talk About with Rabbits] (2013) and "Att vara jag" [To Be Me] (2015). The analysis of the visual intertextuality between pieces of artwork by Peter…

As a child god from Chinese legends, the figure of Nezha has a strong appeal to children, and his story has been adapted to various media. This article examines Nezha's image in three animated films, exploring how this figure has been altered to represent Chinese children and youth and symbolize their subjectivity. From a revolutionary hero to a…

This article examines reader development as a key factor in understanding the pathways through which readers connect to gender expansive books, and relates those concepts to the corpus of books available for elementary level readers. The article provides evidence for the importance of attending to both book quantity and quality, as well as…

This paper explores the American Girl book series and its relation to the history of American education and the school's role in the creation of the ideal American girl. Focused on the Kirsten Larson series of American Girl books, this paper explores how the settler grammars that characterize Kirsten's encounters with an "Indian girl"…

Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of…

The mysterious and unspoken secrets of life can be a source of fascination for young people. The bildungsroman quest for identity is often coupled with a protagonist's attempts to decode a range of secrets. Jamaica Kincaid's work of fiction, "Annie John" (1985), illustrates this journey. In this novel, the female protagonist's maturity…

The work of the French illustrator and writer Gilles Bachelet has been recognised through numerous awards, but he is not yet sufficiently well known in the critical community. In this article, the multilevel humour that constructs his work is studied, both from an iconic and a textual perspective, as well as the situational humour and the humour…

This article presents contemporary Judeo-Spanish poetry for children in the context of the postvernacular mode (when the language is not used any more in everyday communication) of the language. It discusses the poetry collections of three authors who have published Judeo-Spanish poems in the twenty-first century: Ada Gattegno-Saltiel, Avner…

Although gender-role stereotypes in children's literature have been widely explored, the study of the role of mothers and their representation in picturebooks has not received much attention from the academic world, especially as far as Spain is concerned. This paper analyses a sample of seven picturebooks published in Spain over the last 7…