Broadening Critical Boundaries in Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture by Amie A. Doughty (review)

The last few years have seen a great deal of expansion within children's literature studies to include more critical analysis both of children's culture (as opposed to straight-up literature) and of young adult literature and culture as a related but distinct field. There have been many exciting new publications in these areas, including volumes examining comics and graphic novels, social media, nonfiction, race, and environmental literature—to name but a few. I was therefore surprised to read the title of this volume: "Broadening Critical Boundaries" seems remarkably vague in light of the work already undertaken. The very short introduction to this volume unfortunately confirms this impression: only four and a half pages in length, and mostly taken up by brief summaries of the ensuing chapters, it offers as a rationale for the collection only the claim that each essay "brings new insight into children's and YA literature and culture, broadening the critical boundaries of the fields" (5). Little as this is to go on, it is not even clear that it is accurate; although the volume contains many well-written and fascinating essays, many of them consist primarily of new textual explorations of already well-established critical positions, doing little to push those positions beyond their existing boundaries.

The collection is roughly divided into three sections as explicated by the introduction, although these sections are not indicated in the table of contents. Chapters 1–5 deal with texts that fall into the category of "children's" literature and culture, and cover a range of topics from ABC books to cartoons to film. In chapter 1, Rebecca A. Brown looks closely at the Gothic in self-published ABC board books, suggesting how such books might model an ethics of difference for young readers. This is perhaps the most intriguing essay within the collection; by focusing on the impact of self-publishing on content and reception, Brown offers an interesting new angle on what is otherwise a well-explored genre. Chapter 2 focuses on Munro Leaf's Watchbird cartoons, arguing for their continuing relevance to the modern world. In a leap across time and genre, chapter 3 examines black speculative fiction as a potential antidote to the racial exclusion often identified in other forms of speculative fiction; however, as this chapter focuses its analysis on young adult as well as classic children's texts, it is unclear why it appears in this first section. Chapter 4 offers a psychological reading of alternative worlds in texts by Neil Gaiman and Patrick Ness. Finally, chapter 5 turns to environmental ethics in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. While none of these chapters offers a particularly radical or innovative critical approach, each does provide a detailed close reading of a wide range of previously underexamined texts, thereby adding a valuable contribution to the scope of scholarship available in these areas.

The second section consists of two chapters, both devoted to the Harry Potter series—texts that supposedly "bridge the gap between children's and YA literature" (3). Jessica Mitzner Scully argues in chapter 6 for the magical characters in the series to be examined as racialized others, while in chapter 7 Ruth Caillouet compares Harry Potter and Buffy "The Vampire Slayer" Summers as exemplars of specifically adolescent heroes. This section is perhaps the least successful of the three within the volume: rehashing ground already well covered by others, these explorations of the Harry Potter series add little to the existing body of scholarship. Scully's chapter, for example, replays many of the arguments about racialization of house elves and other magical creatures foregrounded in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter (2002), Reading Harry Potter (2003), Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter (2008), and Reading Harry Potter Again (2009); while she references three of these volumes, she neither significantly expands upon the insights that they contain nor considers more recent publications also examining race and Othering...