Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Family in Children's and Young Adult Literature is a comprehensive study of the family in Anglophone children’s and Young Adult literature from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Written by intellectual leaders in the field from the UK, the Americas, Europe, and Australia, this collection of essays explores the significance of the family and of familial and quasi-familial relationships in texts by a wide range of authors, including the Grimms, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Rudyard Kipling, Enid Blyton, Judy Blume, Jaqueline Wilson, Malorie Blackman, Melvin Burgess, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, and others. Author-based and critical survey essays explore evolving depictions of LGBTQIA+ and BAME families; migrant and refugee narratives; the popular tropes of the orphan protagonist and the wicked stepmother; sibling and intergenerational familial relationships; fathers and fatherhood; the anthropomorphic animal and surrogate family; and the fractured family in paranormal and dystopian YA literature. The breadth of essays in Family in Children's and Young Adult Literature encourages readers to think beyond the outdated but culturally privileged ‘nuclear family’ and is a vital resource for students, academics, educators, and practitioners.

Eleanor Spencer is Principal of Janet Clarke Hall at the University of Melbourne, where she is also an Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communications, teaching on the English and Theatre Studies programme. She is the recipient of a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship and was Visiting Fellow in the Department of English at Harvard University. Her research interests include twentieth and twenty-first-century British and American poetry, and children’s and Young Adult fiction. Her recent publications include the New Casebook on American Poetry since 1945 (2016) and essays in Sylvia Plath in Context (2019) and A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry 1960−2015 (2020). Jade Dillon Craig is Associate Professor of Children’s Literature and Young Learners at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Her research interests include children’s literature, Alice studies, visual texts, cinematography, and gender studies. She has published book chapters in volumes with Palgrave Macmillan, Peter Lang, and McFarland. Her most recent publication features in Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research. Jade is a project leader for eBLINK (engelske bildebøker i norske klasserom) and co-founder of the Children’s Literature Education and Research group at NTNU (with Alyssa Magee Lowery).