The Mighty Child

Time and power in children's literature

Clémentine Beauvais | University of Cambridge

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027201584 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027269157 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

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
Published online on 20 January 2015

https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.4

Table of Contents

Table of figures | pp. ix–x

Acknowledgements | pp. xi–xii

Introduction | pp. 1–12

Part I. Time

From puer aeternus to puer existens: The advent of the child “thrown forth” | pp. 15–42

Childhood and the future | pp. 43–66

Part II. Otherness

“Gaps”, desire, and the didactic discourse | pp. 69–102

Problems of others | pp. 103–144

Part III. Commitment

“An exigence and a gift”: Committed children’s literature | pp. 147–184

The pedagogical romance | pp. 185–204

Conclusion | pp. 205–210

Bibliography

First names index | pp. 221–222

Name index | pp. 221–222

Subject index | pp. 223–226

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 (53)

Cited by 53 other publications

Order by:

Falcus, Sarah & Katsura Sako

2024. Intergenerationality, Age, and Environment in Children’s Picturebooks. In The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging, ► pp. 215 ff.

Grange, Richard

2024. How the Character of the Narrator Constructs a Narratee and an Implied Reader in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights. Literature 4:2 ► pp. 122 ff.

Hunter, Madeleine

2024. Adaptation studies has a kids problem. Adaptation

Karmakar, Goutam

2024. Towards a critical ecological ontology: literacy, sustainability, and fostering environmental education through the Indian green informational picturebook. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics ► pp. 1 ff.

Karmakar, Goutam

2024. Transformative Learning with Wangari Maathai: Fostering Environmental Education and Sustainability Through the Green Picturebook Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace. Journal of Human Values

Reay, Emma

2024. Plushies, Dollies, and Action Figurines. In The Child in Videogames, ► pp. 157 ff.

Reay, Emma

2024. Child-Killers and Killer-Children. In The Child in Videogames, ► pp. 89 ff.

Reay, Emma

2024. A Survey of Child-Characters in Contemporary Videogames. In The Child in Videogames, ► pp. 21 ff.

Reay, Emma

2024. Dreaming the Myth Onwards. In The Child in Videogames, ► pp. 1 ff.

Reay, Emma Joy

2024. Side-Eye from the Side Kid: Child Sidekicks as Disciplinary Tools in Contemporary Video Games. Literature 4:4 ► pp. 247 ff.

Rowe, Rebecca & Madeleine Hunter

2024. ‘Growing up means adapting’: childhood and adaptation. Adaptation

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.

Zerafa-Payne, Emerson, Martin Kerby, Eseta Tualaulelei, Alison Bedford & Margaret Baguley

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.

Bedford, Alison, Annette Brömdal, Martin Kerby & Margaret Baguley

2023. Just How Radical Is Radical: Children’s Picture Books and Trans Youth. Children's Literature in Education

Cameron, Danielle

2023. Introduction: Age(ing) in America. Comparative American Studies An International Journal 20:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna & Macarena García-González

2023. Chapter 1. Ethics, epistemologies, and relational ontologies in researching children’s cultures. In Children's Cultures after Childhood [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 16], ► pp. 1 ff.

Deszcz‐Tryhubczak, Justyna & Macarena García‐González

2023. Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies. Children & Society 37:4 ► pp. 1037 ff.

Hale, Elizabeth & Miriam Riverlea

2023. Classical Mythology and Children's Literature... An Alphabetical Odyssey,

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.

Lassén-Seger, Maria & Mia Österlund

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.

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.

Miller, Carl F. & R. Eric Tippin

2023. Haptic Prosody and the Aesthetics of Baby Books. Children's Literature in Education 54:3 ► pp. 294 ff.

Nikola, M. I.

2023. “The New Onegin” from France with Love. Science and School :5 ► pp. 19 ff.

Pryce, Stella Miriam

2023. Chapter 5. Childhood and its afterlives. In Children's Cultures after Childhood [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 16], ► pp. 71 ff.

Reay, Emma, Minhua Ma, Tanya Krzywinska, Gabriela Pavarini, Siobhan Hugh-Jones, Anna Mankee-Williams, Anton Belinskiy & Kamaldeep Bhui

2023. Typologies and Features of Play in Mobile Games for Mental Wellbeing. Simulation & Gaming 54:5 ► pp. 508 ff.

Rybak, Krzysztof

2023. Towards A Literature of Actions: Green Informational Picturebooks and Critical Engagement with Fighting Climate Change. Children's Literature in Education

Zou, Ying

2023. “You Can Choose”: Didacticism and the Struggle for Power in Chinese Parent/Child Dyad Book Choices. Children's Literature in Education 54:2 ► pp. 236 ff.

Zou, Ying & XuDong Tan

2023. Childness and Musicality in Babies’ Songbooks. Children's Literature in Education 54:3 ► pp. 395 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.

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.

Duthoy, Leander

2023. Chapter 7. Dynamics of age and power in a children’s literature research assemblage. In Children's Cultures after Childhood [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 16], ► pp. 102 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.

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.

Johnson, Ida Moen

2021. BjørnandBørn: Queer Interspecies Kinship in Norway’s First Text for Children. Scandinavian Studies 93:2 ► pp. 167 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.

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.

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.

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.

McAdam, Julie E., Susanne Abou Ghaida, Evelyn Arizpe, Lavinia Hirsu & Yasmine Motawy

2020. Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement: Exploring the Value of Hope. Education Sciences 10:12 ► pp. 383 ff.

Meunier, Christophe

2020. David Bédouret, L’Afrique rurale des manuels scolaires de géographie. Géocarrefour 94:1

Alkestrand, Malin

2019. Adolescent Killer and Politician. HumaNetten :43 ► pp. 207 ff.

HUDA, Miftakhul Huda, Abdul Syukur GHAZALİ, Wahyudi SİSWANTO & Muakibatul HASANAH

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.

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.

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.

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.

Beauvais, Clementine

2015. What's in “the gap”? A glance down the central concept of picturebook theory. Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift 6:1

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.

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.

[no author supplied]

2018. An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 9],

[no author supplied]

2021. Growing Sideways in Twenty-first Century British Culture [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 11],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 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