David Rudd

While the Theory Wars are seen to have had a huge impact on English (among other disciplines) in the latter part of the twentieth century, children’s literature studies is often depicted as free of such internecine battles. However, there was a period, beginning in the 1980s with Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction (1984), that many children’s literature critics felt obliged to tackle poststructuralist ideas, whether it was to reject them (and be labelled “liberal humanists”) or accept them (as did the Reading critics). This article reconsiders this contentious period, seeking to go beyond the often acerbic rhetoric and, as a result, argues that, in lumping together these poststructuralist critics, important differences in their positions have been lost. This article re-examines the period and assesses the legacy that has been inherited.

This article examines two twenty-first century films, Juno (2007) and Boyhood (2014), arguing that they are refreshingly different from most previous “coming of age” movies in the way that they avoid the usual clichés associated with such films. Whereas many earlier movies tend to make a single event the turning point in young characters’ lives, these two films deliberately wrong-foot the audience by steering round such predictable scenarios, and give a more credible depiction of characters in their ongoing dealing with the comings and goings of age, whether they are young or old. It is suggested that the films achieve this both in terms of their content and also in their structure, seeking to prioritize the fabula over the sjuzhet. They also have endings that are more “feminine,” avoiding the traditional, climactic male ending.

This article explores the two film adaptations of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Mel Stuart’s 1971 Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Tim Burton’s (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Warner Bros., Burbank, CA, 2005). It champions Robert Stam’s approach to adaptation, which looks at the way a text positions itself in relation to earlier texts in the light of the surrounding cultural environment, arguing that this is a more flexible and “adaptable” approach than earlier favoured models, such as Geoffrey Wagner’s influential tripartite approach. It is argued that these adaptations, despite some attempts at political correctness (especially regarding the Oompa-Loompas) have been at the expense of the feminine, which has been marginalised.

It is argued that there are several problems with Peter Hollindale’s concept, “childness.” First, it is suggested that the term not only has too much semantic latitude, but that its definitional attributes are themselves incompatible, pulling in different directions: from the pragmatic and empirical to the more figurative and aspirational. Linked with this point is a second one: that despite Hollindale’s avowed claim that his term is ‘extremely flexible, and … historically, socially and culturally determined’ (pp. 76-7), it ultimately defers to a biological essentialism.
Thirdly, and as a result of this, the term fails adequately to address many key issues in children’s literature criticism, despite Hollindale’s otherwise exemplary and perceptive readings of texts. Finally, it is suggested that the key issue, of how childhood is seen to be constructed, confers on the child an unwarranted voluntarism that neglects questions of power (i.e. of socialisation and colonisation) probed by others, resulting in a rather Romantic conceptualisation of the child – and, indeed, of “childness.”

This article reconsiders Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 50 years after its initial UK publication, and over a hundred years since Dahl’s birth.
It suggests that the book has often been misinterpreted, in that the work is more critical of modern capitalism than is often recognised, capturing a post-World War II shift in sensibilities from a culture of hard work and deferred gratification to one that celebrated consumerism and instant enjoyment. The article explores this idea by taking a psychoanalytical perspective, drawing largely on the work of Jacques Lacan, especially his notions of the superego, enjoyment and desire. It suggests that Dahl was one of a number of writers (Anthony Burgess and Marshall McLuhan are also discussed) who responded to this shift in capitalist relations, not simply in terms of the content of his work but in the way in which he wrote.

Almost all Shaun Tan's work explores notions of belonging, and related ideas about feeling at home (or not) in time and space. But these issues are most starkly explored in his first solo picture book, The Lost Thing (2000), where the narrator, Shaun, relates his discovery of a mysterious, large, red, hybrid being. This article undertakes a close reading of Tan's text, drawing on the work of theorists like May Douglas, Zygmunt Bauman, Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler to show how societies, through their classificatory logic, manage to deal with any 'matter out of place'. It also explores the particular poignancy of 'misplaced' things in the context of Australia, not only through the Howard Government's draconian treatment of refugees, but also in terms of the country's long-standing guilt about its treatment of the Aboriginal 'stolen generation', and of others, like the forcibly deported British children. In contrast to the more optimistic reading usually given to Tan's work, a darker, more menacing interpretation is suggested though a note of hope is still detected in the narrator's need to record his story. In this way, The Lost Thing is not concerned solely with social issues, but engages with a more existential sense of longing that we can all experience.

This article examines Diana Wynne Jones's novel from a post-structuralist, Derridean perspective, suggesting that she is always aware of the power of words to define and determine our reality. Concentrating on Howl's Moving Castle, it is shown that there is never a base reality that underpins Jones's fantastical forays into this imaginary, Ingary land; rather, her imaginative constructions proceed to undercut what we once thought was solid ground beneath our feet. In this particular novel, she pays especial attention to the way that words construct the reality of women who, too often, are enslaved by a patriarchal establishment that might not be as secure and overbearing as it first appears.