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Maps and Mapping in Children's Literature: Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes
Edited by Nina Goga and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 7] 2017
► pp. 185–202

Chapter 10
Connecting worlds

Mapping space-time in three fictional islands

This chapter, based on a crossdisciplinary framework of cultural geography and children’s literature theory, discusses three children’s novels set on islands, all of which operate within ambiguous fictional worlds and use ambiguous narrative perspective. The issues of belonging/not belonging, time/space connections and interactions, mythical and contemporary world, nature/culture, displacement and spatial marginalisation are emphasised through the maps that are substantially more prominent than in most conventional children’s novels. Rather than an embellishment appearing outside the narrative they are in a subtle way incorporated into it, which also creates a fascinating tension between the visual map and its verbal ekphrasis.

Article outline
  • Islands and islandness
  • Islands, cartography, and literature
  • Islands in children’s literature
    • Gullstruck Island
      • Kensuke’s Kingdom
    • Midwinterblood
  • Author queries
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.7.11nik
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Sedgwick, Marcus
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