(Re)imagining the World: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times ed. by Yan Wu, Kerry Mallan, Roderick McGillis (review)

(Re)imagining the World’s collected essays look to children’s literature as productive work, in which current issues and crises are re-envisioned for young audiences. This collection focuses on the capacity of children’s fiction to capture readers’ attention and inspire their imaginations, as well as to cultivate creative thought and educate on critical concerns. Children’s literature is seen here as a reflection of the temporal and cultural space in which it was created, and as a response “to the tenor of the time” (xii). Each of twelve contributors is assigned a keyword and tasked with defining the “word or concept in terms of its implications for children’s literature and its readers” (xii); chapters include explorations of Knowledge, Imagination, and Future. The contributors approach their topics from interdisciplinary directions, and the resulting collection features forays into cultural studies, monster theory, information literacy, consumerism, childhood studies, and psychological theory. In bringing their theories into focus around terms like Consumption, Empathy, and Food, writers provide points of convergence, offering fresh approaches to inquiry within a vibrant discipline.

In the introduction, the editors acknowledge Philip Nel and Lissa Paul’s alphabetical Keywords for Children’s Literature (2011) and express a desire to complement that collection. Rather than exploring a broad critical vocabulary in terms of children’s literature, as Keywords does, (Re)imagining the World focuses on its subtitle’s “changing times” and the global matters influencing those who write for children and about children’s texts. The contributors offer “explorations of more general vocabulary, words that do have ‘social and cultural’ importance, but that are not specifically associated with literary or cultural studies,” as Erica Hateley’s essay on the word Reading demonstrates (xii). Hateley offers an historical look at how the practice of reading is depicted in children’s literature, from the traditional codex to the digital text, showcasing the need for flexible literacy as newer forms emerge in the digital age (11). In addition to exploring multiple literacies, (Re)imagining the World’s essays concern Canadian, American, Chinese, British, and Australian children’s literature, bridging some international gaps in children’s literature studies. These essays give a specialized glimpse of contemporary children’s literature criticism, with attention to children’s literature’s response to current events and politics.

Cherie Allan’s narrow and localized focus on the Australian Anzac legend in children’s literature reveals how picture books have the potential to shape remembrance and memory on a national scale. The Anzac legend, “one of the most significant events in Australian history, which has since been incorporated into the nation’s cultural memory,” provides a temporal event to be tracked across history, uniting citizens of both Australian and New Zealand heritage. The Anzac legend celebrates the courageous actions of Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC) during World War I, in which ANZAC troops unintentionally landed off-target and behind enemy lines in Turkey, defending a nearly hopeless area until rescue came. Allan analyzes multiple iterations of this cultural and historical legend, in Susie Brown and Margaret Warner’s Lone Pine (2012), Catriona Hoy’s My Grandad Marches on ANZAC Day (2005), and Mark Greenwood’s Simpson and His Donkey (2008). Allan finds that children’s literature has shaped public exposure to the legend through shifts in picture book representations of the Anzac legend, constituting a (re)imagining of the past that offers possibilities for a more positive outlook to the future.

Clare Bradford, writing on monsters in young adult romance, illuminates the tripartite tension between the young female protagonist, the corresponding young female reader, and the cultural monster (whatever form it takes). Bradford examines “two monstrous figures of the young man; the vampire, and the werewolf; the monstrous mother of fairy romance, and the monstrous father” through summative plot analyses of paranormal YA romances like the Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and Wicked Lovely...