Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography


Book Description

Where do children travel when they read a story? Every story has a "where." Scholars and writers explore how geography is imagined in children's literature from Canada, the US, the U.K. and Ireland, from the early 19th century to the present.




Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography


Book Description

Where do children travel when they read a story? In this collection, scholars and authors explore the imaginative geography of a wide range of places, from those of Indigenous myth to the fantasy worlds of Middle-earth, Earthsea, or Pacificus, from the semi-fantastic Wild Wood to real-world places like Canada's North, Chicago's World Fair, or the modern urban garden. What happens to young protagonists who explore new worlds, whether fantastic or realistic? What happens when Old World and New World myths collide? How do Indigenous myth and sense of place figure in books for the young? How do environmental or post-colonial concerns, history, memory, or even the unconscious affect an author's creation of place? How are steampunk and science fiction mythically re-enchanting for children? Imaginative geography means imaged earth writing: it creates what readers see when they enter the world of fiction. Exploring diverse genres for children, including picture books, fantasy, steampunk, and realistic novels as well as plays from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland from the early nineteenth century to the present, Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography provides new geographical perspectives on children's literature.




Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography


Book Description

Where do children travel when they read a story? In this collection, scholars and authors explore the imaginative geography of a wide range of places, from those of Indigenous myth to the fantasy worlds of Middle-earth, Earthsea, or Pacificus, from the semi-fantastic Wild Wood to real-world places like Canada’s North, Chicago’s World Fair, or the modern urban garden. What happens to young protagonists who explore new worlds, whether fantastic or realistic? What happens when Old World and New World myths collide? How do Indigenous myth and sense of place figure in books for the young? How do environmental or post-colonial concerns, history, memory, or even the unconscious affect an author's creation of place? How are steampunk and science fiction mythically re-enchanting for children? Imaginative geography means imaged earth writing: it creates what readers see when they enter the world of fiction. Exploring diverse genres for children, including picture books, fantasy, steampunk, and realistic novels as well as plays from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland from the early nineteenth century to the present, Children’s Literature and Imaginative Geography provides new geographical perspectives on children’s literature.




Children's Literature


Book Description

Ever since children have learned to read, there has been children’s literature. Children’s Literature charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from Aesop’s fables to Mother Goose, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Peter Pan, from Where the Wild Things Are to Harry Potter. The only single-volume work to capture the rich and diverse history of children’s literature in its full panorama, this extraordinary book reveals why J. R. R. Tolkien, Dr. Seuss, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beatrix Potter, and many others, despite their divergent styles and subject matter, have all resonated with generations of readers. Children’s Literature is an exhilarating quest across centuries, continents, and genres to discover how, and why, we first fall in love with the written word. “Lerer has accomplished something magical. Unlike the many handbooks to children’s literature that synopsize, evaluate, or otherwise guide adults in the selection of materials for children, this work presents a true critical history of the genre. . . . Scholarly, erudite, and all but exhaustive, it is also entertaining and accessible. Lerer takes his subject seriously without making it dull.”—Library Journal (starred review) “Lerer’s history reminds us of the wealth of literature written during the past 2,600 years. . . . With his vast and multidimensional knowledge of literature, he underscores the vital role it plays in forming a child’s imagination. We are made, he suggests, by the books we read.”—San Francisco Chronicle “There are dazzling chapters on John Locke and Empire, and nonsense, and Darwin, but Lerer’s most interesting chapter focuses on girls’ fiction. . . . A brilliant series of readings.”—Diane Purkiss, Times Literary Supplement




Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present


Book Description

Focusing on questions of space and locale in children’s literature, this collection explores how metaphorical and physical space can create landscapes of power, knowledge, and identity in texts from the early nineteenth century to the present. The collection is comprised of four sections that take up the space between children and adults, the representation of 'real world' places, fantasy travel and locales, and the physical space of the children’s book-as-object. In their essays, the contributors analyze works from a range of sources and traditions by authors such as Sylvia Plath, Maria Edgeworth, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jenny Robson, C.S. Lewis, Elizabeth Knox, and Claude Ponti. While maintaining a focus on how location and spatiality aid in defining the child’s relationship to the world, the essays also address themes of borders, displacement, diaspora, exile, fantasy, gender, history, home-leaving and homecoming, hybridity, mapping, and metatextuality. With an epilogue by Philip Pullman in which he discusses his own relationship to image and locale, this collection is also a valuable resource for understanding the work of this celebrated author of children’s literature.




Treasure Islands


Book Description

The stories of Eils Dillon receive particular attention on the 10th anniversary of her death. -- Kate Hebblethwaite Maroons-Darwin and the question of humanity -- Siobhan Parkinson-From Utopia to Weslandia, via Terabithia -- Anna Bogen Peter Pan-Wildcat Island, and the lure of the real -- Carmen Prez Diez-C.S. Lewis The voyage of the dawn treader -- David Rudd-Islands and I-lands in Enid Blyton -- Jane OHanlon-Enid Blytons relevance -- Clive Barnes-Changes in island adventure in the mid-20th century -- Robert Dunbar-Textual ownership in recent young adult fiction -- Maureen A. Farrell-Scottish childrens literature -- Elizabeth Parsons-The sea in Gary Crews picture books -- Celia Keenan-Tradition and modernity in Into the west and Whale rider -- Michael Flanagan-Catholic/nationalist ideology in Irish popular culture -- Marnie Hay-Irish nationalist propaganda aimed at children, 191016 -- Mire U Mhaicn-The Celtic otherworld in retellings of Old Irish tales -- Patricia Kennon-Si




Lightfinder


Book Description

Aisling, a young Cree woman, sets out into the wilderness with her Kokum (grandmother), Aunty and two young men she barely knows. They have to find and rescue her runaway younger brother, Eric. Along the way she learns that the legends of her people might be real and that she has a growing power of her own.




How I Learned Geography


Book Description

As he spends hours studying his father's world map, a young boy escapes the hunger and misery of refugee life. Based on the author's childhood in Kazakhstan, where he lived as a Polish refugee during World War II.




Map of Dreams


Book Description

When war devastates their country, a boy and his parents are forced to flee to another country far east, where they must live in a small room shared with another couple. Food is scarce. But one day, when father goes to the bazaar to buy bread, he comes home with a map instead. The boy and his mother are furious, they are so hungry! But the map floods their cheerless room with colour. The boy becomes fascinated by it and is transported far away without ever leaving the room. Father was right to buy it, after all.




Maps and Mapping in Children's Literature


Book Description

Maps and Mapping in Children’s Literature is the first comprehensive study that investigates the representation of maps in children’s books as well as the impact of mapping on the depiction of landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes in children’s literature. The chapters in this volume pursue a comparative approach as they represent a wide spectrum of diverse genres and national children’s literatures by examining a wealth of children’s books from Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the USA. The theoretical and methodological approaches range from literary studies, developmental psychology, maps and geography literacy, ecocriticism, historical contextualization with both new historicist and political-historical leanings, and intermediality to materialist cartographies, cultural studies, island studies, and genre studies. By this, this volume aims at embedding children’s literature in a broader field of literary and cultural studies, thus situating children’s literature research within a general context of literary theory.