Mystery in Children's Literature : From the Rational to the Supernatural

mystery In Children's Literature Charts A Development From Religious Mystery Through Rationally Solved Detective Fictions To Insoluble Supernatural And Horror Mysteries. Written By Internationally Recognized Scholars In The Field, These 13 Original Essays Offer Challenging And Innovative Readings Of Both Classic And Popular Mysteries For Children. This Volume Will Be Essential And Stimulating For Anyone With An Interest In Children's Literature Or In Mystery Fiction. booknews contributors From The Us, Australian, And Britain Roam Over The Variety Of Mystery In Children's Literature And Demonstrate The Range Of Critical And Theoretical Responses It Can Provoke. They Use Their Own Definitions Of Mystery, But The Volume's Overall Notion Includes All Secret Or Unexplained Experiences, Things, Or Occurrences. The 14 Essays Are Arranged To Suggest A Roughly Chronological Shift From Certainty To Hesitation Beginning In The 1950s. Annotation C. Book News, Inc., Portland, Or (booknews.com) Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Mystery in Children’s Literature from the Rational to the Supernatural: an Introduction....Pages 1-13 ‘so great and beautiful that I cannot write them’: Religious Mystery and Children’s Literature....Pages 14-31 Nancy’s Ancestors: the Mystery of Imaginative Female Power in The Secret Garden and A Little Princess....Pages 32-45 The Juvenile Detective and Social Class: Mark Twain, Scouting for Girls, and the Nancy Drew Mysteries....Pages 46-63 Children’s Detective Fiction and the ‘Perfect Crime’ of Adulthood....Pages 64-81 Digging up the Family Plot: Secrets, Mystery, and the Blytonesque....Pages 82-99 Plotting the Past: the Detective as Historian in the Novels of Philippa Pearce....Pages 100-114 The Secret Development of a Girl Writer: Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy....Pages 115-130 Apparition and Apprehension: Supernatural Mystery and Emergent Womanhood in Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Novels by Margaret Mahy....Pages 131-148 Possessed by the Beast: Subjectivity and Agency in Pictures in the Dark and Foxspell....Pages 149-164 ‘There Are Worse Things Than Ghosts’: Reworking Horror Chronotopes in Australian Children’s Fiction....Pages 165-183 The Mysteries of Postmodern Epistemology: Stratemeyer, Stine, and Contemporary Mystery for Children....Pages 184-201 Harry Potter and the Mystery of Ordinary Life....Pages 202-209 Enigma’s Variation: the Puzzling Mysteries of Avi, Ellen Raskin, Diana Wynne Jones, and Chris Van Allsburg....Pages 210-218 Back Matter....Pages 219-228 The first book to assess critically mystery in children's literature, this collection charts a development from religious mystery through rationally solved detective fictions to insoluble supernatural and horror mysteries. Written by internationally recognised scholars in the field, these thirteen original essays offer challenging and innovative readings of both classic and popular mysteries for children. This volume will be essential and stimulating reading for anyone with an interest in children's literature or in mystery fiction.