In the early decades of the twenty-first century, we are grappling with the legacies of past centuries and their cascading effects upon children and all people. We realize anew how imperialism, globalization, industrialization, and revolution continue to reshape our world and that of new generations. At a volatile moment, this collection asks how twenty-first century literature and related media represent and shape the contemporary child, childhood, and youth. Because literary representations construct ideal childhoods as well as model the rights, privileges, and respect afforded to actual young people, this collection surveys examples from popular culture and from scholarly practice. Chapters investigate the human rights of children in literature and international policy; the potential subjective agency and power of the child; the role models proposed for young people; the diverse identities children embody and encounter; and the environmental well-being of future human and nonhuman generations. As a snapshot of our developing historical moment, this collection identifies emergent trends, considers theories and critiques of childhood and literature, and observes how new technologies and paradigms are destabilizing past conventions of storytelling and lived experience.


Nathalie op de Beeck is the author of Suspended Animation: Children’s PictureBooks and the Fairy Tale of Modernity (2010) and co-creator of Little Machinery: A Critical Facsimile Edition (2009). Her work appears in The Oxford Handbook ofChildren’s Literature (2011), The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (2017), and journals including CLAQ and CLE. She is Associate Professor of English atPacific Lutheran University, USA.