Contributions by Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Kathleen Kellett, Andrew
McInnes, Joyce McPherson, Rebecca Mills, Cristina Rivera, Wendy
Rountree, Danielle Russell, Anah-Jayne Samuelson, Sonya Sawyer Fritz,
Andrew Trevarrow, and Richardine Woodall
Home. School. Nature. The spaces children occupy, both physically and
imaginatively, are never neutral. Instead, they carry social, cultural,
and political histories that impose--or attempt to impose--behavioral
expectations. Moreover, the spaces identified with childhood reflect and
reveal adult expectations of where children "belong."
The essays in Containing Childhood: Space and Identity in Children's
Literature explore the multifaceted and dynamic nature of space, as
well as the relationship between space and identity in children's
literature. Contributors to the volume address such questions as: What
is the nature of that relationship? What happens to the spaces
associated with childhood over time? How do children conceptualize and
lay claim to their own spaces?
The book features essays on popular and lesser-known children's fiction
from North America and Great Britain, including works like The Hate U
Give, His Dark Materials, The Giver quartet, and Shadowshaper.
Adopting a multidisciplinary approach in their analysis, contributors
draw upon varied scholarly areas such as philosophy, race, class, and
gender studies, among others. Without reducing the issues to any
singular theory or perspective, each piece provides insight into
specific treatments of space in specific periods of time, thereby
affording scholars a greater appreciation of the diverse spatial
patterns in children's literature.
