The Mighty Child
Time and power in children's literature
Author
The Mighty Child offers an existentialist approach to the theorization and criticism of children’s literature, nuancing the academic claim that children’s literature, specifically defined as ‘didactic’, alienates childhood from adulthood and disempowers its implied child reader. This volume recentres the theoretical debate around the constructions of time and power which characterize conceptions of childhood and adulthood in children’s literature. The ‘hidden’, didactic adult of children’s literature, this volume argues, is not solely the dictatorial planner of the child’s future, but also a disempowered entity, yearning for unpredictability in the semi-educational, semi-aesthetic endeavor of the children’s book. Leaning on current work in the field of children’s literature theory, on French phenomenological existentialism, and on the philosophy and sociology of childhood, The Mighty Child is addressed to contemporary theorists and critics of children’s literature.
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 4] 2015. xii, 226 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Table of figures | pp. ix–x
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Acknowledgements | pp. xi–xii
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Introduction | pp. 1–12
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Part I. Time
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From puer aeternus to puer existens: The advent of the child “thrown forth” | pp. 15–42
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Childhood and the future | pp. 43–66
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Part II. Otherness
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“Gaps”, desire, and the didactic discourse | pp. 69–102
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Problems of others | pp. 103–144
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Part III. Commitment
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“An exigence and a gift”: Committed children’s literature | pp. 147–184
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The pedagogical romance | pp. 185–204
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Conclusion | pp. 205–210
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Bibliography
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First names index | pp. 221–222
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Name index | pp. 221–222
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Subject index | pp. 223–226
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Nouns index | pp. 223–226
“Clementine Beauvais has produced a remarkable book. The Mighty Child is at once perceptive, philosophical, sophisticated and engaging. Her existentialist approach is applied to a fascinating body of 'committed' children's books produced in the West since 1950 to produce readings that illuminate the paradoxes of power and ambivalence about the future in much writing for children. This is a book that shows the value of children's literature as a primary source for scholars working in many fields. It is also a deeply optimistic book that points to the potential for positive change through the literature of childhood.”
Kimberley Reynolds, Newcastle University
“
The Mighty Child is an impressive book which makes an important and innovative contribution to its field. Its theorisation of existentialism and children’s literature is lucidly written, and its theoretical understanding and arguments are astute. Providing new and significant analysis of the texts it considers, this is a work that promises to become essential reading for those interested in theoretical approaches to children’s literature.”
Adrienne Gavin, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
“The Mighty Child’s reading of time and power in children’s literature redefines basic concepts of children’s literature studies, such as the child, adult, didacticism or hope, and marks new pathways for children’s literature scholarship and criticism. Its coherent, informed and lucid confronting and merging of existentialist writings with recent children’s literature criticism and divergent children’s literature texts – from classics to recent work, from novels to poetry, from picturebooks to crossover literature – can be seen as a demonstration of one of the multiple intellectually stimulating directions which children’s literature studies might take if they dare to try. Future theoretical and historical testing of its arguments and conclusions, their development, confirmation or rejection, will hopefully have the same revealing effect.”
Marijana Hameršak, University of Zagreb, in Libri & Liberi 5(1): 262-263
Cited by
Cited by 24 other publications
Beauvais, Clementine
2015. What's in “the gap”? A glance down the central concept of picturebook theory. Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift 6:1 
2019. Is There a Text in This Child? Childness and the Child-Authored Text. Children's Literature in Education 50:1 ► pp. 60 ff.
2020. Bright Pasts, Brighter Futures: Biographies for Children in the Early Twenty-First Century. In Literary Cultures and Twenty-First-Century Childhoods, ► pp. 57 ff.
Boal, Marianne O’Kane
2022. ‘Small Existential Fractures and an Interrogative Relationship with the World’: An Existentialist Reading of Frances Hardinge’s A Face Like Glass. International Research in Children's Literature 15:2 ► pp. 138 ff.
Butler, Catherine
2021. Lost Futures: Reading, Memory, and Repression. International Research in Children's Literature 14:2 ► pp. 156 ff.
Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna & Irena Barbara Kalla
2021. Play, Children’s Literature, and Intergenerational Connectivity. In Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships, ► pp. 1 ff.
Deszcz‐Tryhubczak, Justyna & Macarena García‐González
2022. Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies. Children & Society
Duthoy, Leander
2022. ‘I Became Much Wiser over Time’: Readers’ Use of Innocence and Wisdom as Age Norms in Responses to Children’s Literature. International Research in Children's Literature 15:3 ► pp. 279 ff.
Dziri, Nourhene
2022. Adultism at the Root of Youth Maltreatment in A. S. King’s Still Life with Tornado. Children's Literature in Education 53:1 ► pp. 18 ff.
García-González, Macarena
2022. Towards an Affective Childist Literary Criticism. Children's Literature in Education 53:3 ► pp. 360 ff.
Huda, Miftakhul Huda, Abdul Syukur Ghazali, Wahyudi Iswanto & Muakibatul Hasanah
2019. Cognitive Level of Characters in the Indonesian Novel As a Source of Learning. Journal for the Education of Gifted Young Scientists ► pp. 931 ff.
Jiang, Jianli & Derong Xu
2023. Community and Individuality in Chinese and American Picturebooks: A Contrastive Study of Constructs of Childhood. International Research in Children's Literature 16:1 ► pp. 59 ff.
Johnson, Ida Moen
2021.
Bjørn and Børn: Queer Interspecies Kinship in Norway’s First Text for Children. Scandinavian Studies 93:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Joosen, Vanessa
2020. Just Listen? Silence, Silencing, and Voice in the Aesthetics, Reception, and Study of Children's Literature. International Research in Children's Literature 13:Supplement ► pp. 111 ff.
Lyngfelt, Anna, Karin Sporre, David Lifmark, Annika Lilja, Christina Osbeck & Olof Franck
2023. Bridging ‘as is’ and ‘as if’ by reading fiction in ethics education. Cambridge Journal of Education 53:1 ► pp. 63 ff.
Malewski, Anne & Nick Lavery
2021. Jellyfish, Lions, and Ducks: Sideways Spirals of Growth in Lucy Ellmann'sDucks, Newburyport. International Research in Children's Literature 14:3 ► pp. 299 ff.
Nikolajeva, Maria
2016. Recent Trends in Children's Literature Research: Return to the Body. International Research in Children's Literature 9:2 ► pp. 132 ff.
2019. What is it Like to be a Child? Childness in the Age of Neuroscience. Children's Literature in Education 50:1 ► pp. 23 ff.
Plourde, Aubrey
2019. The Innocent Old Way: Reserved Interpretation and Christina Rossetti's “Goblin Market”. PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 134:5 ► pp. 1076 ff.
Veldhuizen, Vera Nelleke
2021. Narrative Ethics in Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners. Children's Literature in Education 52:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Waller, Alison & Sarah Falcus
2021. Life Stages. International Research in Children's Literature 14:3 ► pp. 245 ff.
Zou, Ying
2022. “You Can Choose”: Didacticism and the Struggle for Power in Chinese Parent/Child Dyad Book Choices. Children's Literature in Education
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Subjects & Metadata
Literature & Literary Studies
BIC Subject: CFG – Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
BISAC Subject: LIT009000 – LITERARY CRITICISM / Children's & Young Adult Literature