'This remarkable work provides not just a carefully composed snapshot of the discipline today, but a compelling vision of its future. Experienced and new voices, established and emerging approaches, topical issues and old debates revisited - and all clearly explained. A gift to scholars.'
Kimberley Reynolds, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University
A Collection of newly commissioned essays tracing cutting-edge developments in children's literature research
Time has passed since 'having a PhD in children's literature' was a funny joke in You've Got Mail. Children's literature research is now one of the most dynamic fields of literary criticism and has a bright future ahead - as children's writers and publishers invent yet more forms of literature for young people, and researchers find yet more sophisticated ways of exploring them. This collection takes informed and scholarly readers to the utmost frontier of children's literature criticism, from the intricate worlds of children's poetry, picturebooks and video games to the new theoretical constellations of critical plant studies, non-fiction studies and big data analyses of literature. It offers a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches, including a mixture of empirical and theoretical research at the intersection of education and literary studies.
Clémentine Beauvais is a Lecturer in Education at the University of York. She has worked on politically committed literature for children, on existentialist theorisations of children's literature, and more recently on the history and cultural sociology of child giftedness. She is the author of The Mighty Child: Time and Power in Children's Literature (2015).
Maria Nikolajeva is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and director of the Cambridge Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature. Her most recent books are Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young People (2010) and Reading for Learning: Cognitive Approaches to Children's Literature (2014).
Cover image and design: Helen Merrin (www.helenmerrin.com)
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ISBN 978-1-4744-1463-0
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Clémentine Beauvais is a Lecturer in Education at the University of York. She has worked on politically committed literature for children, on existentialist theorisations of children's literature, and more recently on the history and cultural sociology of child giftedness. She is the author of The Mighty Child: Time and Power in Children's Literature (2015).

Maria Nikolajeva is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and director of the Cambridge Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature. She was the president of the International Research Society for Children's Literature 1993-97 and received the International Grimm Award for lifetime achievement in children's literature research. Her most recent books are Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young People (2010) and Reading for Learning: Cognitive Approaches to Children's Literature (2014).

Introduction, Maria Nikolajeva and Clémentine Beauvais; Part I: Contemporary directions in children's literature scholarship; 1. Teaching the conflicts: Diverse responses to diverse children's books, Karen Coats; 2. Posthumanism: Rethinking 'the human' in modern children's literature, Victoria Flanagan; 3. Animal studies, Zoe Jaques; 4. Spatiality in fantasy for children, Jane Carroll; 5. A question of scale: Zooming out and zooming in on feminist ecocriticism, Alice Curry; 6. Age studies and children's literature, Vanessa Joosen; 7. Carnality in adolescent literature, Lydia Kokkola; 8. Cognitive narratology and adolescent fiction, Roberta Seelinger Trites; 9. Empirical approaches to place and the construction of adolescent identities, Erin Spring; 10. Picturebooks and situated readers: The intersections of text, image, culture and response, Evelyn Arizpe; 11. Re-memorying: A new phenomenological methodology in children's literature studies, Alison Waller; Part II: Contemporary trends in children's and young adult literature; 12. Canons and canonicity, Anja Müller; 13. Seriality in children's literature, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer; 14. Counterfactual historical fiction for children and young adults, Catherine Butler; 15. Pattern, texture and print: New technology, old aesthetic in contemporary picturebook-making, Martin Salisbury; 16. Telling stories in different formats: New directions in digital stories for children, Junko Yokota; 17. Multimodality and multiliteracies: Production and reception, Margaret Mackey; 18. Serendipity, independent publishing and translation flow: Recent translations for children in the UK, Gillian Lathey; 19. The picturebook in instructed foreign language learning contexts, Sandie Mourão; Part III: Unmapped territories; 20. Next of kin: 'The child' and 'the adult' in children's literature theory today and tomorrow, Clémentine Beauvais; 21. Critical plant studies and children's literature, Lydia Kokkola; 22. Health, sickness and literature for children, Jean Webb; 23. Evolutionary criticism and children's literature, Maria Nikolajeva; 24. The genetic study of children's literature, Vanessa Joosen; 25. Distant reading and thin description, Eugene Giddens; 26. Hogwarts versus Svalbard: Cultures, literacies and game adaptations of children's literature, Andrew Burn; 27. Hybrid novels for children and young adults, Eve Tandoi, 28. Cyberspace and story: The impact of digital media on printed children's books, Victoria Flanagan.