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  • British Children’s Literature in the Twenty-First CenturyBookbird Guest Editors
  • Liz Thiel (bio) and Alison Waller (bio)

Here at the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature we promote excellent scholarship in children’s literature. Based at the University of Roehampton in London, we are well aware of the wealth of literary tradition we can draw on in our capital city: the birthplace of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins, travel destination of Paddington and Harry Potter, and vision of the future in Mortal Engines and Un Lun Dun.We were thrilled to be asked to edit this special issue of Bookbird to mark the IBBY Congress in London as we have always enjoyed our long-running partnership with IBBY UK. We find the international outlook refreshing and are stimulated by the exchange of ideas with [End Page iv] academics, writers, educators and children’s book professionals.

As guest editors our aim is to present something of the current state of British children’s literature, giving a sense of our established and thriving national literary scene and thinking about recent trends, but also celebrating challenges to our canon with views from the inside and out. Canonical texts, from Carroll to Lewis, continue to flourish and to be read by new generations of readers, but we also want to showcase some of the exciting innovations in the world of British children’s literature. We are very pleased that in our ‘Children and their Books’ section we have been able to include a piece by the Children’s Laureate, Julia Donaldson, and an introduction to Newcastle’s Seven Stories archive, along with a fascinating account by Beverley Naidoo of her publishing history in the UK and an exploration of young children’s talk about picture books. Donaldson and the former Laureate, Jacqueline Wilson, feature as the subject of our Letters, along with another award-winning British author-illustrator, Mini Grey.

We have enjoyed working with new and established researchers in the field who have distinct perspectives on how twenty-first-century British children’s literature is located within a historical, political, and global context. Michele Gill’s article on Tim Bowler opens the issue, using his “Blade” novels as a touchstone for examining a narrative of attitudes towards the working classes in fiction and social history, from Dickens and nineteenth-century children’s literature to the present day. Gill’s exploration of London’s dangerous cityscape and the portrayal of a “feral underclass” takes us some way from the pleasures offered by our capital city this summer (when the Olympics vie with the IBBY Congress for top tourist event), but demonstrates the continuing discourses of demonization that surround young people who fall outside of the normal structures of society.

At the other end of the spectrum to Bowler’s futuristic vision of a crumbling social urbanity is Michele Paver’s “Chronicles of Ancient Darkness” series, set in a prehistoric past and structured around questions of human interaction with the natural landscape. Our academic section concludes with Anthony Pavlik’s ecocritical exploration of the “green world” portrayed by Paver and we hope it provides a vision of the way that children’s literature can still engage with this sceptred isle in optimistic ways.

There is assuredly evidence of optimism for Britain’s future in contemporary writing for children, although the comforting closures beloved of authors in earlier centuries have long been superseded by far grittier realism that exposes the flaws within Britain and attitudes to those who are relatively recent inhabitants. Intrinsic to that realism is acknowledgement of what might be perceived as discomfiting ‘truths’ about contemporary Britain and, perhaps most importantly, about its imperial and colonial past, acknowledgement which is essential if the country is to embrace the idea of a truly multi-cultural island and celebrate Britishness in all its diversity. Children’s authors have always had an important role to play in engendering and perpetuating new ideologies and it is perhaps not surprising that a number of today’s writers for children have chosen to expose preconceptions and present new and inclusive models of British identity.

In her examination of historical fictions for young readers, Blanka Grzegorczyk explores...

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