Children’s Literature and Childhood Discourses

Societies that do not value the power of storytelling for children do not value the future. This book promises to offer a much needed broadening perspective on the field of contemporary children’s literature and its vital place in helping young people navigate today’s world. -- Sita Brahmachari, Award-winning Children's & YA author As this collected volume crosses disciplinary divides, it not only constitutes a major contribution to children’s literature scholarship but also shows the substantial relevance of this field for example to linguistics, gender studies or childhood studies. It will appeal both to academic readers and those with other professional expertise related to children and childhood. -- Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, University of Wroclaw, Poland This book represents a new and innovative approach to the study of children’s literature. It is likely to be of interest to linguists, literary scholars, education researchers, librarians, teachers and parents, and also to researchers in the numerous domains with which it makes connections. -- Martin Wynne, University of Oxford, UK What happens to children’s minds when they read literature? How do literary texts form a child’s knowledge and experience of the world? What roles might both societal factors, such as gender, and cognitive factors, such as embodiment, play in all this? These questions, and many more, are explored in the multidisciplinary and muti-methodological studies that constitute this learned and pioneering volume. -- Michael Burke, Utrecht University, the Netherlands