The close of a century invites both retrospection and prognostication. As a period of transition, it also brings a sense of uncertainty, finality, and apocalypticism. These feelings stem from various events, such as political turmoil, scientific advancements, and social change. As might be expected, literature reflects such changes and the feelings they engender. But perhaps more surprisingly, children's literature is especially sensitive to such matters, and fiction for children often struggles with dark and unpleasant issues. This book examines fin de siecle tensions in 19th- and 20th-century children's literature from around the world. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor, and the volume ranges over a disparate variety of topics. These include poetry, series books, pacifist fiction, gender issues, religion and literature, eco-criticism, minority experiences, humor and the Holocaust, fantasy and science fiction, and computer culture. In exploring these issues in relation to children's literature, the contributors reveal the shifting nature of our values and the world in which we live. Global in nature, the chapters look at children's literature from such places as Germany, Holland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States.

This book offers a variety of approaches to children's literature from a postcolonial perspective that includes discussions of cultural appropriation, race theory, pedagogy as a colonialist activity, and multiculturalism. The eighteen essays divide into three sections: Theory, Colonialism, Postcolonialism. The first section sets the theoretical framework for postcolonial studies; essays here deal with issues of "otherness" and cultural difference, as well as the colonialist implications of pedagogic practice. These essays confront our relationships with the child and childhood as sites for the exertion of our authority and control. Section 2 presents discussions of the colonialist mind-set in children's and young adult texts from the turn of the century. Here works by writers of animal stories in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, works of early Australian colonialist literature, and Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess come under the scrutiny of our postmodern reading practices. Section 3 deals directly with contemporary texts for children that manifest both a postcolonial and a neo-colonial content. In this section, the longest in the book, we have studies of children's literature from Canada, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

From creepy picture books to Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and countless vampire series for young adult readers, fear has become a dominant mode of entertainment for young readers. The last two decades have seen an enormous growth in the critical study of two very different genres, the Gothic and children s literature.

The Gothic, concerned with the perverse and the forbidden, with adult sexuality and religious or metaphysical doubts and heresies, seems to represent everything that children s literature, as a genre, was designed to keep out. Indeed, this does seem to be very much the way that children s literature was marketed in the late eighteenth century, at exactly the same time that the Gothic was really taking off, written by the same women novelists who were responsible for the promotion of a safe and segregated children s literature.

This collection examines the early intersection of the Gothic and children s literature and the contemporary manifestations of the gothic impulse, revealing that Gothic elements can, in fact, be traced in children s literature for as long as children have been reading.

From creepy picture books to Harry Potter to Lemony Snicket to the Spiderwick Chronicles to countless vampire series for young adult readers, fear has become a dominant mode of entertainment for young readers. The last two decades have seen an enormous growth in the critical study of two very different genres, the Gothic and children's literature.

The Gothic, concerned with the perverse and the forbidden, with adult sexuality and religious or metaphysical doubts and heresies, seems to represent everything that children's literature, as a genre, was designed to keep out. Indeed, this does seem to be very much the way that children's literature was marketed in the late eighteenth century, at exactly the same time that the Gothic was really taking off, written by the same women novelists who were responsible for the promotion of a safe and segregated children's literature.

Gothic elements can, in fact, be traced in children's literature for as long as children have been reading. This collection examines the early intersection of the Gothic and children's literature and the contemporary manifestations of the gothic impulse.

Voices of the Other offers a variety of approaches to children's literature that includes discussions of cultural appropriation, race theory, pedagogy as a colonialist activity, and multiculturalism. The 18 essays divide into three sections: Theory, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism. Section 1 sets the theoretical framework for postcolonial studies, while section 2 presents discussions of the colonialist mind-set in children's and young adult's texts from 1900 onward. Here, works by writers of animal stories in Canada, The US, and Britain, works of early Australian colonialist literature, and Burnett's A little Princess are scrutinized through postmodern readings. Section 3 deals directly with contemporary texts for children that manifest both a postcolonial and a neocolonial content, and features studies of children's literature from Canada, Australia, Africa, The Caribbean, and The United States.

"He Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western" explores the construction and representation of masculinity in low-budget western movies made from the 1930s to the early 1950s. These films contained some of the mid-twentieth-century's most familiar names, especially for youngsters: cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Red Ryder. The first serious study of a body of films that was central to the youth of two generations, "He Was Some Kind of a Man" combines the author's childhood fascination with this genre with an interdisciplinary scholarly exploration of the films influence on modern views of masculinity.

McGillis argues that the masculinity offered by these films is less one-dimensional than it is plural, perhaps contrary to expectations. Their deeply conservative values are edged with transgressive desire, and they construct a male figure who does not fit into binary categories, such as insider/outsider or masculine/feminine. Particularly relevant is the author's discussion of George W. Bush as a cowboy and how his aspirations to cowboy ideals continue to shape American policy.

This engagingly written book will appeal to the general reader interested in film, westerns, and contemporary culture as well as to scholars in film studies, gender studies, children's literature, and auto/biography.

The unique blend of fairy tale atmosphere and social realism in this novel laid the groundwork for modern fantasy literature. In the novel, Little Diamond, a kind and precocious boy living in poverty, is befriended by the mysterious North Wind, who takes him on her nightly adventures. Written in intensely poetic language, At the Back of the North Wind transcends the genres of children's book or fairy tale. Appendices include essays on childhood by contemporaries such as John Ruskin and Charles Dickens, as well as contextualizing selections from Victorian fantasy and fairy tales.

It has been 15 years since Roderick McGillis edited For the Childlike, a landmark collection of essays about George MacDonald's writings. This latest collection of 14 essays sets a new standard that will influence MacDonald studies for many more years. George MacDonald experts are increasingly evaluating his entire corpus within the nineteenth century context. This volume provides further evidence that MacDonald will eventually emerge from the restrictive and somewhat misleading reputation of being C.S. Lewis' spiritual "master." _._._._ MacDonald scholar, Stephen Prickett writes: "This is an important, exciting, and even challenging and controversial volume. It looks, as never before, at MacDonald's historical imagination, the influence of his native Scottish culture, the impact of English and German Romanticism, his reading of the Bible, his interest in Darwinism, and in the Victorian intellectual environment as a whole. Several contributors provocatively discuss recent adaptations, redactions, and presentations of MacDonald's work and thought. This collection of essays truly places MacDonald in context." _._._._ Rolland Hein, author of George MacDonald: Victorian Mythmaker, writes: "Many astute critical judgments in this comprehensive collection represent the best of contemporary scholarship on George MacDonald."