John Pennington

George MacDonald

Roderick McGillis

Annotated Edition

Phantastes

He Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western explores the construction and representation of masculinity in low-budget western movies made from the 1930s to the early 1950s. These films contained some of the mid-twentieth-century’s most familiar names, especially for youngsters: cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Red Ryder. The first serious study of a body of films that was central to the youth of two generations, He Was Some Kind of a Man combines the author’s childhood fascination with this genre with an interdisciplinary scholarly exploration of the films influence on modern views of masculinity. McGillis argues that the masculinity offered by these films is less one-dimensional than it is plural, perhaps contrary to expectations. Their deeply conservative values are edged with transgressive desire, and they construct a male figure who does not fit into binary categories, such as insider/outsider or masculine/feminine. Particularly relevant is the author’s discussion of George W. Bush as a cowboy and how his aspirations to cowboy ideals continue to shape American policy. This engagingly written book will appeal to the general reader interested in film, westerns, and contemporary culture as well as to scholars in film studies, gender studies, children’s literature, and auto/biography.

Masculinities in the B Western

He Was Some Kind of a Man

Anna Jackson

Karen Coats

From creepy picture books to Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and countless vampire series for young adult readers, fear has become a dominant mode of entertainment for young readers. The last two decades have seen an enormous growth in the critical study of two very different genres, the Gothic and children’s literature. The Gothic, concerned with the perverse and the forbidden, with adult sexuality and religious or metaphysical doubts and heresies, seems to represent everything that children’s literature, as a genre, was designed to keep out. Indeed, this does seem to be very much the way that children’s literature was marketed in the late eighteenth century, at exactly the same time that the Gothic was really taking off, written by the same women novelists who were responsible for the promotion of a safe and segregated children’s literature. This collection examines the early intersection of the Gothic and children’s literature and the contemporary manifestations of the gothic impulse, revealing that Gothic elements can, in fact, be traced in children’s literature for as long as children have been reading.

Haunting the Borders

The Gothic in Children's Literature

George MacDonald's AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND has enticed critics since its publication in 1871. The unique blend of fairy tale atmosphere and social realism in this novel laid the groundwork for modern fantasy literature. In the novel, Little Diamond, a kind and precocious boy living in poverty, is befriended by the mysterious North Wind, who takes him on her nightly adventures. Written in intensely poetic language, AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND transcends the genres of children's book or fairy tale. BEHIND THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND includes 16 essays on this enigmatic and richly layered fantasy novel - with perspectives ranging from the influence of MacDonald's Christian worldview or the relation between fantasy and reality, to grappling with AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND as children's literature. A variety of artist's illustrations are included, from editions published be-tween 1871 to 1988, visually reinforcing the imaginative impact MacDonald's classic story continues to have on readers. This collection of essays is designed as a companion volume to Broadview Press's critical edition of AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND, also edited by Pennington and McGillis.

Behind the Back of the North Wind

George MacDonald and the Lilith Legend in the XIXth Century

From creepy picture books to Harry Potter to Lemony Snicket, fear has become a dominant mode of entertainment for young readers. This collection examines the early intersection of the Gothic and children's literature and the contemporary manifestations of the gothic impulse.

Kerry Mallan

Yan Wu

(Re)Imagining the world: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times considers how writers of fiction for children imagine ‘the world’, not one universal world, but different worlds: imaginary, strange, familiar, even monstrous worlds. The chapters in this collection discuss how fiction for children engages with some of the changes brought about by new technologies, information literacy, consumerism, migration, politics, different family structures, cosmopolitanism, new and old monsters. They also invite us to think about how memory shapes our understanding of the past, and how fiction engages our emotions, our capacity to empathise, and our desire to discover, and what the future may hold. The contributors bring different perspectives from education, postcolonial studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, childhood studies, postmodernism, and the social sciences. With a wide coverage of texts from different countries, and scholarly and lively discussions, this collection is itself a testament to the power of the human imagination and the significance of children’s literature in the education of young people. ​

Children's literature's response to changing times

(Re)imagining the World

This text provides a reading of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, the 19th-century children's novel. Issues of money, imperialism, class conciousness, gender awareness, and the role of children in 19th-century society and in literature, are all examined in detail. Also discussed are the various cover designs and illustrations for the book, which reflect readers' expectations of content and form. This book is designed to help contemporary readers discover how the novel is relevant to their own lives.

Gender and Empire

A Little Princess

Practical criticism of three "classic" or soon-to-be-classic children's books - Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, and Chris Van Allsburgh's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick - provides the substance of the Nimble Reader. McGillis employs these texts as well as others to explain the basic tenets and processes of criticism and to discuss criticism's usefulness in enhancing our understanding of children's literature. He skillfully balances theoretical discussions of various types of criticism - archetypal, psycho-analytical, political, structuralist, poststructuralist, reader response, and the New Criticism - with practical analysis of his primary texts and other works. With his engaging choice of texts, emphasis on practical criticism, and inclusion of bibliographies of both children's literature and works on literary theory and criticism, McGillis has succeeded in producing a dual-purpose volume: The Nimble Reader not only demonstrates a new approach to children's literature as a serious object of study but also represents one of the clearest presentations of literary theory published to date.

Literary Theory and Children's Literature

The Nimble Reader

This book offers a variety of approaches to children's literature from a postcolonial perspective that includes discussions of cultural appropriation, race theory, pedagogy as a colonialist activity, and multiculturalism. The eighteen essays divide into three sections: Theory, Colonialism, Postcolonialism. The first section sets the theoretical framework for postcolonial studies; essays here deal with issues of "otherness" and cultural difference, as well as the colonialist implications of pedagogic practice. These essays confront our relationships with the child and childhood as sites for the exertion of our authority and control. Section 2 presents discussions of the colonialist mind-set in children's and young adult texts from the turn of the century. Here works by writers of animal stories in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, works of early Australian colonialist literature, and Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess come under the scrutiny of our postmodern reading practices. Section 3 deals directly with contemporary texts for children that manifest both a postcolonial and a neo-colonial content. In this section, the longest in the book, we have studies of children's literature from Canada, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Children's Literature and the Postcolonial Context

Voices of the Other

This book offers a variety of approaches to children's literature from a postcolonial perspective that includes discussions of cultural appropriation, race theory, pedagogy as a colonialist activity, and multiculturalism. The eighteen essays divide into three sections: Theory, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism. The first section sets the theoretical framework for postcolonial studies; essays here deal with issues of "otherness" and cultural difference, as well as the colonialist implications of pedagogic practice. These essays confront our relationships with the child and childhood as sites for the exertion of our authority and control. The second section presents discussions of the colonialist mindset in children's and young-adult texts from the turn of the century. Here, works by writers of animal stories in Canada, the U.S., and Britain; works of early Australian colonialist literature; and Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess come under the scrutiny of our postmodern reading practices. Section Three deals directly with contemporary texts for children that manifest both a postcolonial and a neo-colonial content, and includes studies of children's literature from Canada, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Roderick McGillis

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