Studies in Children’s Literature, 1500-2000
Editors: Celia Keenan & Mary Shine Thompson.
Ranging from the fundamental question, whether a children’s literature is possible, or what its formal and contextual parameters might be, to the exigent issues of contemporary cultural studies – postcolonialism, gender, race and class – this essay collection inserts children’s literature into literary, theoretical and historical debate.
2005. 180pp. ISBN: 1-85182-877-X
Treasure Islands: Studies in Children’s Literature
Editors: Celia Keenan & Mary Shine Thompson
Ranging from Daniel Defoe to Siobhán Parkinson, from Shakespeare to Enid Blyton, this collection of essays takes the reader on a fascinating voyage to the Treasure Islands of children’s literature. Picture books, myths, movies, newspaper columns and boys’ periodicals all come under scrutiny, and the critical journey travels to Australia, America and Scotland, as well as to the more familiar islands of English and Irish stories.
2006. 224pp. ISBN:1-85182-941-
Divided Worlds: Studies in Children’s Literature
Editors: Mary Shine Thompson & Valerie Coghlan
This volume, the third collection of studies in children’s literature, explores the political, social and cultural divisions that dominate children’s books, ranging over Irish and international topics and texts. Articles on the fiction of Katherine Tynan, Maria Edgeworth and Somerville & Ross, as well as modern Ulster fiction and contemporary children’s publishing, are indicative of the range of Irish material. The international focus extends from Luigi Bertelli’s treatment of fascism and Gianni Rodari’s communism to the English contexts of Cecil Alexander’s English hymns. Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Roman Britain series is revisited to explore its masculinities, and gendered divisions are the subject of a review of Oisin McGann’s recent fantasy fiction.
2007. 256pp. ISBN: 978-1-84682-011-3
Young Irelands: Studies in Children’s Literature Edited by Mary Shine Thompson The essays in this book, the fourth in the Studies in Children’s Literature Series, examine how various texts read by children since the eighteenth century reflect concepts of Irish national and/or imperial identity, and how they resist the empire and the nation’s normative concepts. They also explore how non-Irish readers receive Irish children’s books. 2011. 200pp. ISBN: 978-1-84682-141-7
