In this article, we begin by discussing approximately thirty picture books dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic published digitally in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other English-speaking countries in the first six months of 2020. The worldwide impact of COVID-19 resulted in the rapid global digital publication of numerous…

This article argues that food acts and eating in the nineteenth century children's novel "The Coral Island" (1858) reveal adult socializing intentions in the context of an expanding British Empire. Written during a transitional historical moment, R. M. Ballantyne's "The Coral Island" communicates to middle- and upper-class…

In Britain, children's literature studies emerged in the late 1960s, largely through the activities of what is now the Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter. This article uses the Catherine Storr archive to revisit some of the contexts and concerns of those early days, many of which continue to have relevance. Storr was involved…

This article begins by reflecting on the present refugee crisis and its relevance to children in the UK. It identifies the need for teaching about the refugee experience to young children and argues that literature can provide a conduit for this. Since the millennium there has been a rapid increase in the number of books published for children…

Aidan Chambers' "Breaktime" (1978) is famous for its unique narrative style and sexual content. This focus has obscured another significant aspect of the novel: the role of social class in "Breaktime" and Chambers' working-class background have rarely been explored. Chambers was an example of what Richard Hoggart calls…

How do schoolchildren respond when they encounter a wheelchair user in a fictional text? This article describes a doctoral project where groups of children were presented with excerpts from books by Hilary McKay and Jacqueline Wilson in which wheelchair users play a significant role. The pupils were asked to discuss issues arising from these…

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 the…

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 Laureates…

The myth of home is what distinguishes children's literature from adult novels (Wolf 1990). Nodelman and Reimer ("The Pleasures of Children's Literature," 2003) write that while "the home/away/home pattern is the most common story line in children's literature, adult fiction that deals with young people who leave home usually ends…