Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present

Focusing on questions of space and locale in children's literature, this collection explores how metaphorical and physical space can create landscapes of power, knowledge, and identity in texts from the early nineteenth century to the present. The collection is comprised of four sections that take up the space between children and adults, the representation of 'real world' places, fantasy travel and locales, and the physical space of the children's book-as-object. In their essays, the contributors analyze works from a range of sources and traditions by authors such as Sylvia Plath, Maria Edgeworth, Gloria Anzaldua, Jenny Robson, C.S. Lewis, Elizabeth Knox, and Claude Ponti. While maintaining a focus on how location and spatiality aid in defining the child's relationship to the world, the essays also address themes of borders, displacement, diaspora, exile, fantasy, gender, history, home-leaving and homecoming, hybridity, mapping, and metatextuality. With an epilogue by Philip Pullman in which he discusses his own relationship to image and locale, this collection is also a valuable resource for understanding the work of this celebrated author of children's literature. Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 List of Contributors 12 Acknowledgments 16 Introduction: Spaces of Power, Places of Play 18 Part 1: The Spaces Between Children and Adults 38 1 Unstable Metaphors: Symbolic Spaces and Specific Places 40 2 Speaking the Space between Mother and Child: Sylvia Plath, Julia Kristeva, and the Place of Children’s Literature 56 Part 2: Real-World Places 72 3 The Neapolitan Gouache of a Strong-Minded English Lady: ‘The Little Merchants’ by Maria Edgeworth 74 4 Borders, Pachangas, and Chicano/a Children’s Picture Books 92 5 Sinister Ecology: Space, Environmental Justice, and Belonging in Jenny Robson’s Savannah 2116 AD 112 Part 3: Traversing the Imaginery 126 6 English Exploration and Textual Travel in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 128 7 Mapping the Interior: Place, Self, and Nation in the Dreamhunter Duet 146 8 Journeys through Bookland’s Imaginative Geography: Pleasure, Pedagogy, and the Child Reader 164 Part 4: Book Space 180 9 The Story Unfolds: Intertwined Space and Time in the Victorian Children’s Panorama 182 10 The Child’s Imaginary World: The Spaces of Claude Ponti’s Picture Books 210 Epilogue: Inside, Outside, Elsewhere 232 Index 258 Focusing on questions of space and locale in children’s literature, this collection explores how metaphorical and physical space can create landscapes of power, knowledge, and identity in texts from the early nineteenth century to the present. The collection is comprised of four sections that take up the space between children and adults, the representation of 'real world' places, fantasy travel and locales, and the physical space of the children’s book-as-object. In their essays, the contributors analyze works from a range of sources and traditions by authors such as Sylvia Plath, Maria Edgeworth, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jenny Robson, C.S. Lewis, Elizabeth Knox, and Claude Ponti. While maintaining a focus on how location and spatiality aid in defining the child’s relationship to the world, the essays also address themes of borders, displacement, diaspora, exile, fantasy, gender, history, home-leaving and homecoming, hybridity, mapping, and metatextuality. With an epilogue by Philip Pullman in which he discusses his own relationship to image and locale, this collection is also a valuable resource for understanding the work of this celebrated author of children’s literature