The Mighty Child

Time and power in children's literature

| University of Cambridge
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ISBN 9789027201584 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027269157 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00
 
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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.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“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.”
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.”
“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.”
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2024. Plushies, Dollies, and Action Figurines. In The Child in Videogames,  pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
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2024. Child-Killers and Killer-Children. In The Child in Videogames,  pp. 89 ff. DOI logo
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2024. A Survey of Child-Characters in Contemporary Videogames. In The Child in Videogames,  pp. 21 ff. DOI logo
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2024. Dreaming the Myth Onwards. In The Child in Videogames,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Rushton, Elizabeth, Lynda Dunlop, Lucy Atkinson, Joshua Stubbs, Maria Turkenburg-van Diepen & Lucy Wood
2024. Researching education for environmental sustainability through intergenerational dialogue. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 33:2  pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
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2024. Not just in black and white: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian children’s picture books. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 47:1  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Just How Radical Is Radical: Children’s Picture Books and Trans Youth. Children's Literature in Education DOI logo
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2023. Introduction: Age(ing) in America. Comparative American Studies An International Journal 20:1  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies. Children & Society 37:4  pp. 1037 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Classical Mythology and Children's Literature... An Alphabetical Odyssey, DOI logo
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2023. Survival Kits for Babies: Baby Box Books and Infant Temporality in Finnish Maternity Packages. Children's Literature in Education 54:3  pp. 334 ff. DOI logo
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2023. “The New Onegin” from France with Love. Science and School :5  pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Chapter 5. Childhood and its afterlives. In Children's Cultures after Childhood [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 16],  pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
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2021. Lost Futures: Reading, Memory, and Repression. International Research in Children's Literature 14:2  pp. 156 ff. DOI logo
Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna & Irena Barbara Kalla
2021. Play, Children’s Literature, and Intergenerational Connectivity. In Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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2021. BjørnandBørn: Queer Interspecies Kinship in Norway’s First Text for Children. Scandinavian Studies 93:2  pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Johnson, Ida Moen
2021.  Bjørn and Børn: Queer Interspecies Kinship in Norway’s First Text for Children. Scandinavian Studies 93:2  pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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2021. Narrative Ethics in Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners. Children's Literature in Education 52:1  pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Waller, Alison & Sarah Falcus
2021. Life Stages. International Research in Children's Literature 14:3  pp. 245 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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2020. Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement: Exploring the Value of Hope. Education Sciences 10:12  pp. 383 ff. DOI logo
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2019. Adolescent Killer and Politician. HumaNetten :43  pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
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2019. Cognitive Level of Characters in the Indonesian Novel As a Source of Learning. Journal for the Education of Gifted Young Scientists 7:4  pp. 931 ff. DOI logo
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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. DOI logo
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2016. Recent Trends in Children's Literature Research: Return to the Body. International Research in Children's Literature 9:2  pp. 132 ff. DOI logo
Nikolajeva, Maria
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. DOI logo
Beauvais, Clementine
2015. What's in “the gap”? A glance down the central concept of picturebook theory. Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift 6:1 DOI logo
Beauvais, Clémentine
2019. Is There a Text in This Child? Childness and the Child-Authored Text. Children's Literature in Education 50:1  pp. 60 ff. DOI logo
Beauvais, Clémentine
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. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects

Literature & Literary Studies

Theoretical literature & literary studies

Main BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

Main BISAC Subject

LIT009000: LITERARY CRITICISM / Children's & Young Adult Literature
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2014034040 | Marc record