IRSCL

Acts of Reading. Teachers, Texts and Childhood. Edited by Morag Styles and Evelyn Arizpe. Stoke-on-Trent, Sterling: Trentham Books, 2009. v +244 pages. USD 34.95 (paperback). This book gathers papers initially given at an international conference in 2007, which originated in the discovery of the so-called “Jane Johnson archive” in Indiana. As indicated by M. Spenser’s [...]

Shakespeare as Children’s Literature: Edwardian Retellings in Words and Pictures. Velma Bourgeois Richmond. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. 363 pages. USD 35.00 (paperback). In their Preface to Tales From Shakespeare (1807), Charles and Mary Lamb engage in a complex dialectic with some twenty plays by Shakespeare that serve curiously as both the point of departure for [...]

Representations of Technology in Science Fiction for Young People. Noga Applebaum. New York: Routledge, 2010. 187 pages. £80 (hardback). Noga Applebaum’s contribution to Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture series offers an insightful new angle from which to explore constructions of childhood in literature for young readers. The study is motivated by her concern that the [...]

Frigjord oskuld. Heterosexuellt mognadsimperativ i svensk ungdomsroman [Empowered Innocence. The heterosexual Developmental Imperative in Swedish Young Adult Fiction]. Mia Franck. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2009. 322 pages. 27€ (paperback). Ever since 1906, when Finland was the first European nation to grant women the right to vote, women’s rights have been at the centre of [...]

Public School Literature, Civic Education and the Politics of Male Adolescence. Jenny Holt. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 270 pages. £55 (hardback). In her exploration of the dynamic between public school literature, male adolescence and citizenship, Jenny Holt proposes the public school story as a source through which to examine developing ideas about adolescence and citizenship. She [...]

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England. Literature, Representation, and the NSPCC. Monica Flegel. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 208 pages. 55£ (hardback). “Couple try to sell baby son for £20.” “Drunken mum jailed over baby death.” “Teen admits squirting bleach over mother after Harry Potter film.” “Parents of disabled girl found hanged are charged with child [...]

Facets of Children’s Literature Research: Collected and Revised Writings. Göte Klingberg. Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Children’s Books, 2008. 197 pages. E-book. It is inspiring to read a work by someone who dedicated his life to children’s literature research. In this e-book, Göte Klingberg offers numerous reflections collected from various papers and presentations in order to [...]

Keeling, Kara K. and Pollard, Scott T. (eds) Critical Approaches to Food in Children’s Literature, New York & London: Routledge, 2009. 276pp. 0 415 96366 4 This is an excellent contribution to what has increasingly been called “food studies” – a discipline that for many might be viewed as curiously as “child studies.” Bring the [...]

The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership. Rachel Falconer. New York: Routledge, 2008. 280 pages. £75 (hardback). Within one year Routledge has published two books on crossover fiction in the Children’s Literature and Culture series. This is an indication that in the first years of the new millennium the phenomenon of adults [...]

Little Machinery. A Critical Facsimile Edition. Mary Liddell. Foreword by John Stilgoe. Critical Essay by Nathalie Op De Beeck. Detroit: Wayne state University Press, 2009. 99 pages. USD 24.95 (paperback). When I opened this little jewel of a facsimile, with its carefully-drawn illustrations representing the slim figure of an automaton with iron limbs and the [...]