Children's Literature and Culture
About the Book Series
Founding Editor and Series Editor 1994-2011: Jack Zipes
Series Editor, 2011-2018: Philip Nel
Founded by Jack Zipes in 1994, Children's Literature and Culture is the longest-running series devoted to the study of children’s literature and culture from a national and international perspective. Dedicated to promoting original research in children’s literature and children’s culture, in 2011 the series expanded its focus to include childhood studies, and it seeks to explore the legal, historical, and philosophical conditions of different childhoods. An advocate for scholarship from around the globe, the series recognizes innovation and encourages interdisciplinarity. Children's Literature and Culture offers cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections considering topics such as gender, race, picturebooks, childhood, nation, religion, technology, and many others. Titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.
Books in this series have consistently won prestigious awards, including the International Research Society for Children’s Literature Award for Best Monograph, the International Research Society for Children’s Literature Best Edited Book Award, and the Children’s Literature Association’s (CHLA) Book Award.
The Picturebook between Fiction and Reality
1st Edition
Edited
By Smiljana Narančić Kovač, Nikola Novaković
July 31, 2026
The book examines the multifaceted dimensions of the picturebook as a format and explains its specific ontological status between fiction and reality based on its semiotic structure which relies on two divided and interrelated discourses, verbal and visual. It addresses the roles of both narrative ...
Cultural Perspectives on Sweets in Children’s Literature and Media
1st Edition
Edited
By Sabine Planka, Corina Löwe
July 20, 2026
Our language is full of 'sweet' terms to describe situations (‘a bittersweet moment’), things (‘popcorn brain’), behaviour (‘to have a sweet tooth’), or even loved ones (‘sweety’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘honey’) that are originally not linked to food. What seems to be common to almost all cultures, is ...
Fieldwork in Ukrainian Children’s Literature
1st Edition
Edited
By Mateusz Świetlicki, Anastasia Ulanowicz
July 20, 2026
Fieldwork in Ukrainian Children’s Literature showcases the work of prominent scholars of children’s literature from Ukraine and the diaspora as it traces the history of books written, marketed for, and circulating among young people since the rise of Ukraine’s nationhood in the nineteenth century. ...
Narratives for Young Readers on West Asia: War, Trauma and Resilience
1st Edition
By Arya Priyadarshini, Suman Sigroha
July 20, 2026
Through critical textual analysis of the trauma narratives for young readers written in English on political conflicts and the violation of humanitarian values, this book recovers the response to trauma from the margins of the survivor spectrum. By focusing on the experiences of Syrian and ...
The Biopolitics of Childhood in the Long American 19th Century
1st Edition
Edited
By Lucia Hodgson, Allison Giffen
July 20, 2026
This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The study of nineteenth-century biopolitics offers a theoretical framework that promises to increase our understanding of how modern democracies manage ...
The Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond
1st Edition
Edited
By Svetlana Efimova, Marina Balina
May 25, 2026
This edited volume proposes a new perspective on how children's literature interacts with politics: its chapters focus not only on politics and literature or politics in literature, but primarily on the politics of text and image. Following Jacques Rancière's philosophy, the collection understands ...
Detective Fiction for Young Readers: Full of Secrets
1st Edition
By Chris McGee
May 21, 2026
Detective Fiction for Young Readers is an examination of contemporary mystery stories for children and young adults. This volume explores how the conventions, rules, and expectations of adult mystery fiction have filtered down, so to speak, especially in the past several decades, to writing for ...
Uranian Children’s Literature and the Early Gay Movement in England: The Romance of Youth
1st Edition
By Eric L. Tribunella
March 19, 2026
Uranian Children’s Literature and the Early Gay Movement in England: The Romance of Youth considers how writers associated with the Uranian poets, Order of Chaeronea, and British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSSP)—among the earliest efforts to organize on behalf of same-sex love in ...
The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature
1st Edition
By Angel Daniel Matos
December 26, 2025
The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature is a provocative meditation on emotion, mood, history, and futurism in the critique of queer texts created for younger audiences. Given critical demands to distance queer youth culture from narratives of violence, sadness, and hurt that have ...
Reading Children’s Fairytales: Inside the Gingerbread House
1st Edition
Edited
By Mette Lindahl-Wise, Harry Oulton, Vicky Macleroy, Emily Corbett
November 17, 2025
Fairytales form a cornerstone of children’s and YA literature studies, and the tale of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ has been translated, adapted and retold across the years. Reading Children’s Fairytales: Inside the Gingerbread House brings together leading and emerging researchers and practitioners to ...
Risk in Children’s Adventure Literature
1st Edition
By Elly McCausland
October 26, 2025
Risk in Children’s Adventure Literature examines the way in which adults discuss the reading and entertainment habits of children, and with it the assumption that adventure is a timeless and stable constant whose meaning and value is self-evident. A closer enquiry into British and ...
Children’s Literature in Place: Surveying the Landscapes of Children’s Culture
1st Edition
Edited
By Željka Flegar, Jennifer M. Miskec
June 26, 2025
Children’s Literature in Place: Surveying the Landscapes of Children’s Culture is an edited collection dedicated to individual, international, and interdisciplinary considerations of the places and spaces of children’s literature, media, and culture, from content to methodology, in fictional, ...