Introduction; 1. How fantasy became children's literature; 2. Fairies, ghouls and goblins: the realms of Victorian fancy; 3. The American search for an American childhood; 4. British and Empire fantasy between the wars; 5. The changing landscape of post-war fantasy; 6. Folklore, fantasy and indigenous fantasy; 7. Middle-earth, medievalism and mythopoeic fantasy; 8. Harry Potter and children's fantasy since the 1990s; 9. Romancing the teen; Further reading.
A comprehensive study of children's fantasy literature across the English-speaking world, from the sixteenth century to the present.
Michael Levy is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Stout. He is the author of Natalie Babbitt (1991) and Portrayal of Southeast Asian Refugees in Recent American Children's Books (2000), editor of The Moon Pool by A. Merritt (2004), and co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Extrapolation. Levy was awarded the Clareson Award for Distinguished Service to the fields of science fiction and fantasy in 2007. Farah Mendlesohn is Head of the Department of English and Media and Professor of Literary History at Anglia Ruskin University. She is the author of Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008) and The Inter-Galactic Playground: Children, Teens and Science Fiction (2009), co-author of A Short History of Fantasy (2009), and co-editor of the Hugo Award-winning Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (Cambridge, 2003) and The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy (Cambridge, 2012).
'Levy and Mendlesohn give a convincing explanation for a
distinctively post-Second World War literature where children are
unprotected, where they have agency and responsibility, where they
face true and terrible evil. As time goes on, the stakes continue
to rise. Compare Nesbit's world to Narnia - do our young
protagonists have a small, limited quest to complete, or do we
expect them to save the world?' Daniel Hahn, The Spectator
'Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction is an immense work
in scope and scholarship. As befits its authors, Michael Levy and
Farah Mendlesohn - two prominent figures in the world of children's
literature criticism - this latest work is a far-reaching feat that
grasps the tenuous strings of the inception of both fantasy and
children's literature and weaves them from the sixteenth through
the twenty-first centuries into a tremendous narrative tapestry.'
Joli Barham McClelland, Children's Literature Association
Quarterly
'Sharing their extensive knowledge of the topic, Michael Levy and
Farah Mendlesohn have made a relevant contribution to the study of
this field with their monograph Children's Fantasy Literature: An
Introduction. Published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press, the
book is a result of the continuing collaboration of the authors,
their colleagues, and students … Levy and Mendlesohn have succeeded
in finding a manner of expression which can easily be understood by
scholars and experts, but also those whose knowledge of fantasy is
not yet extensive.' Katarina Kralj, Libri & Liberi
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