Plants in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

From the forests of the tales of the Brothers Grimm to Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree, from the flowers of Cicely May Barker’s fairies to the treehouse in Andy Griffith and Terry Denton’s popular 13-Storey Treehouse series, trees and other plants have been enduring features of stories for children and young adults. Plants act as gateways to other worlds, as liminal spaces, as markers of permanence and change, and as metonyms of childhood and adolescence. This anthology is the first compilation devoted entirely to analysis of the representation of plants in children’s and young adult literatures, reflecting the recent surge of interest in cultural plant studies within the environmental humanities. Mapping out and presenting an internationally inclusive view of plant representation in texts for children and young adults, the volume includes contributions examining European, American, Australian, and Asian literatures and contributes to the research fields of ecocriticism, critical plant studies, and the study of children’s and young adult literatures.

"This ground-breaking volume makes an exceptionally compelling case for the relevance of critical plant studies to youth literature. Drawing from and extending perspectives from ancient Western and contemporary Indigenous philosophy, new materialist and posthumanist thought, and scientific discoveries of the communicative capacities of plants, the authors focus attention on the myriad ways the diverse literature of childhood, with its vivid depictions of sentient vegetal life, orients young readers toward or away from ethical human-plant relations. Engaging with global texts ranging from folklore to contemporary YA fantasies, child-authored poetry to Indigenous stories, picturebooks to middle grade fiction, this is essential reading for anyone interested in environmental humanities, ecopoetics, and children’s literature studies." Professor Karen Coats, University of Cambridge

Melanie Duckworth is Associate Professor of English Literature at Østfold University College, Norway, where she teaches British, postcolonial, and children’s literature. Her research interests include Australian literature, plant studies, children’s literature, and ecocriticism, and she has published on Australian historical children’s fiction, Australian literature, ecofeminism, and contemporary poetry. Lykke Guanio-Uluru is Professor of Literature at Western Norway University and researches literature and ethics, particularly plant studies, ecocriticism, fantasy, and game studies. She is the author of Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature (2015) and multiple research articles, and co-editor of Ecocritical Perspectives on Children’s Texts and Cultures: Nordic Dialogues (2018).