The essays in Home Words explore the complexity of the idea of home
through various theoretical lenses and groupings of texts. One focus of
this collection is the relation between the discourses of nation, which
often represent the nation as home, and the discourses of home in
children's literature, which variously picture home as a dwelling,
family, town or region, psychological comfort, and a place to start from
and return to. These essays consider the myriad ways in which discourses
of home underwrite both children's and national literatures.
Home Words reconfigures the field of Canadian children's literature as
it is usually represented by setting the study of English- and
French-language texts side by side, and by paying sustained attention to
the diversity of work by Canadian writers for children, including both
Aboriginal peoples and racialized Canadians. It builds on the literary
histories, bibliographical essays, and biographical criticism that have
dominated the scholarship to date and sets out to determine and
establish new directions for the study of Canadian children's
literature.