Posthumanism, Philosophy for Children, and Anthony Browne’s “Little Beauty”

Using a posthuman conceptual framework, I analyze in detail Anthony Browne’s complex decisions about censorship and child protection in the process of creating the written text and the images in his picture book Little Beauty. Analysis of this work exposes many contradictions located in the relationship between science/art, animal/human, fantasy/reality, machine/life, and child/adult and includes Browne’s choice of characters, ending of the story, and the deliberate variety of art styles throughout this work. I offer a theoretical framework for exploring the ethico-politcal role of the artist when producing such a picture book and a practical posthuman pedagogy that interrupts using children’s literature in education as a means to give readers the right moral messages. Instead, I invite students of all ages to interrogate possibly discriminatory conceptual distinctions via philosophical enquiries.