American culture is greatly influenced by conservative and religious views that construct adolescent sexuality as problematic. Consequently, American teenagers are often informed that abstinence is the right moral choice and will allow them to lead a successful adult life. The ultimate punishment for engaging in pre-marital sex is deemed to be…

This article considers the fictional depiction of surveillance in "Harry Potter," and compares the two different models of school leadership represented by Dolores Umbridge and Albus Dumbledore. The "Harry Potter" books put forward a vision of school leadership that affirms the necessity of surveillance. The optimal degree of…

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 uses the Japanese television anime series "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" (2011) as a case study through which to problematise the relationship between two prominent traditions within children's literature criticism: narratology, with its vocabulary of implied readers and textual address; and reception studies, which typically…

Media platforms frequently report on "Black Lives Matter" in order to raise awareness about institutional racism. However, these platforms often focus on African American male teenagers (Trayvon Martin in a hoodie and "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" for Michael Brown). Noticeably absent are images of Black girls. As a response to these…

This article argues that there are several problems with Peter Hollindale's concept, "childness." First, it is suggested that the term not only has too much semantic latitude, but that its definitional attributes are themselves incompatible, pulling in different directions: from the pragmatic and empirical to the more figurative and…

In Hollindale's "Signs of Childness in Children's Books" (1997), the idea that adulthood is continuous with childhood co-exists with the idea that it is forever separated. Far from being self-contradictory, this reflects the complex reality represented within children's literature. Focusing on the case of children's poetry, in which the…

This paper focuses on the ways in which multiple constructions of childhood are produced, consumed and exchanged as child characters negotiate the adult world in "Homecoming" (1981), the first of Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman novels. Drawing on Peter Hollindale's ideas about interactions and exchanges between children and adults, the paper…

This article explores child-authored texts, both real and fictional, and the adult discourse surrounding or commenting on such texts. It focuses on the example of young Marcel's writing in Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," and on the critical commentary on the juvenilia of child authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I…

This article reflects on insights gained from a larger study that explored how a class of ten- and eleven-year-olds read and responded to David Almond's hybrid novel, "My Name is Mina." Through focusing on the children's performances of the poems contained within the text, the discussion examines embodied aspects of the children's…

This article considers alternatives to the established constructivist approaches to children's literature, exploring instead the potential of two relatively recent areas of inquiry, cognitive poetics and evolutionary literary criticism. The article questions the assumption, implied if not directly expressed by Peter Hollindale in "Signs of…

This paper draws on two forms of cognitive studies to examine how a minority language literature cultivates feelings of in-group belonging. The minority in focus are the Tornedalingar: Swedish nationals who live near the Torne River which marks the border with Finland. The official language of the Tornedalingar is "Meänkieli" which…

The astronomical success of "Matilda the Musical" can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the popularity of Roald Dahl himself. Yet, anyone who knows the novel cannot help but notice that this award-winning musical has made significant changes to the original plot. While revisions are to be expected when novels are adapted…

This essay argues that Maggie Thrash's "Honor Girl" navigates a multi-liminal space allowing it to participate in and expand upon traditions that already exist within children's literature, graphic memoirs, the comics medium, and the history of girl camps as homosocial spaces. By discussing graphic memoirists for adults (such as Alison…

This article presents an analysis of a recent, award-winning Swedish novel for children and young adults, "The Murderer's Ape" by Jakob Wegelius, and digitally published reviews of the novel. In the first part of the paper, we provide an intersectional analysis of the novel, focusing on gender, profession, species and class. The…