The use of metafictive devices in children's literature, in particular contemporary picturebooks, has been explored by numerous scholars working from different theoretical and disciplinary backgrounds. In particular, metafiction is often described as oppositional to traditional children's literature which often produces stable, knowable, readable…

This article employs the theory of social minds proposed by Alan Palmer ("Social Minds in the Novel," 2010) to argue for the emergence of a group-based thinking, feeling, and acting focused on reforming the status quo, using David Whitley's Agora trilogy (2009--2013) as an example of Radical Fantasy. This particular subgenre of fantasy…

Situated within the changing economic and political contexts of China's modernization and globalization, children's fantasy novels prove to be apt vehicles for exploring the plights and challenges that women and girls face in the new millennium in China. This article provides a feminist critique of two contemporary Chinese children's fantasy…

While there has been a multitude of studies of "Harry Potter" since its first appearance, including studies analyzing individual characters, social classes in the wizarding world, and a number that examine the "'Harry Potter' phenomenon" as a whole, there are none that systematically analyze and compare the characters in terms…

While John Tenniel's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice books are nearly as famous as the books themselves, the question of whether these illustrations contribute to or compromise the effects produced by the written text has rarely been explored. In this paper, it is argued that the status of the illustrations is problematic unless the actual…

This article examines Martha Finley's immensely popular, postbellum Elsie Dinsmore series. As a teacher, Finley was concerned with the best methodology to educate young American women, a topic much debated in the nineteenth century because of the proliferation of conduct books like the Elsie series and the simultaneous advent of common schools.…

This paper reads the U.K. Government's "fundamental British values" project alongside two children's Gothic novels, "Coram Boy" (2000) by Jamila Gavin and "City of Ghosts" (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as "fundamental British values" (FBV), making it a requirement…

This article reconsiders Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" 50 years after its initial UK publication, and over a hundred years since Dahl's birth. It suggests that the book has often been misinterpreted, in that the work is more critical of modern capitalism than is often recognised, capturing a post-World War II shift in…

Though critics have debated the gendered ideologies at work in the ballet book genre, discussion so far has overlooked how race shapes the meanings of such stories and the ways that stereotypes about black females have caused them to be excluded from representation in both the world of classical dance and ballet stories. This essay provides a…

This study explores the impact of the political uprisings in the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring, on Arabic YA literary books. It is based on a content analysis of the Etisalat Book Award's shortlisted entries for the period 2012-2016. It is argued that both children's and YA literature of the Arab World subsequently became more open about…

For decades, feminists have tried to dismantle and argue against the image of the Medusa as a figure of female monstrousness. This paper claims that the celebrated British author and poet Ted Hughes, in his novella for children, The Iron Woman, redeemed the Medusa and presented her in a new light that revealed her as a victim, a healer, and a…

The Basque Country is a stateless nation located in the western part of the Pyrenees, divided between France and Spain. The romanticist nationalist trend that emerged in Europe throughout the nineteenth century gave rise to a nationalist feeling in the Basque Country that has been fed, among others, by children's literature. Children's literature…

Writing as an African American woman existing at the margins of American society in the mid 1970s, Mildred D. Taylor demonstrated a postmodern awareness of fictionality and history in "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" (1976). Reworking African American history from the point of view and voice of a black subaltern female child, Taylor…

This article discusses the results of an empirical study that examined third grade Latinx children's discussions of literature dealing with themes of immigration. The study focused on the reading of six picture books by Mexican-origin children at a public elementary school located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. The data were collected by…

In the social context of China's rural-urban migration, a varied set of forces has increasingly challenged the conventional assumptions used to underpin the notion of home as a space fixed in geography and one's lineage. This essay calls into question the essentialist values associated with home, and explores new realities and representations of…