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Part of
Children's Cultures after Childhood
Edited by Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Macarena García-González
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 16] 2023
► pp. 35–51

Chapter 3
Messy assemblages

Interplay of the organic and the inorganic in children’s toy stories

| Department of Elementary Education, Mata Sundri College for Women, University of Delhi

Children’s books often feature toys coming to life and present an exciting interplay between the organic and the inorganic. Relying on the theoretical framework of posthumanism and vital materialism, this chapter explores how the material body of the toy is simultaneously real and artificial, tugging at the binaries by which humanity is circumscribed. My readings of The Velveteen Rabbit, The Indian in the Cupboard and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane describe the toy stage in the life course of objects. Toys in these narratives upset the boundaries of real/unreal, organic/inorganic, human/nonhuman that were drawn between these categories to validate the supremacy of human subjects.

Keywords: Toys stories, children’s literature, posthumanism, vital materialism, after childhood
Article outline
  • Reading toy narratives and invoking posthuman play
  • The Velveteen Rabbit : Crossing ontological divides and becoming “real”
  • The Indian in the Cupboard : Exerting thing-power and becoming “alive”
  • The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane : Entering assemblages and “living forever”
  • Conclusion: Thinking and doing after childhood
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 8 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.16.03kha
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