This is a collection of views on children's literature and national identity answering question such as: how do young readers see themselves and "others" in the texts they are encouraged to read or find on their own?; How are their sympathies recruited in tales of war and conflict? Where do their loyalties lie? How do they approach and interpret books in translation? How do writers in other European countries portray UK adults and how universal are fairy tales? Books for children and young adults are embedded in the culture and language of their origins. Although the multicultural nature of the UK is now more positively reflected in children's books , the Englishness of English books is still strong. The questions of national identity and children's literature are considered by European writers from their own perspectives, so highlighting what is often taken for granted about |"others" in relation to "ourselves" and vice versa.

How do young readers see themselves and others in texts they read? How are their sympathies recruited in tales of wars and conflicts? Where do their loyalties lie? How do they approach and intepret books in translation? How do writers in other European countries portray UK adults? How universal are fairly tales? Books for children and young adults are fairly deeply embedded in the culture and language of their origins. Although the multicultural nature of the UK is now more positively reflected in children's books and the fact that there are many Englishesis acknowledged, the Englishness of books is still strong. The questions of national identity and children's literature are considered by European writers from their own perspectives, so as to highlight what is often taken for granted about 'other' in relation to 'ourselves' and via versa.

WINNER OF THE PRESIGIOUS ETISALAT AWARD AN ADVENTURE-FILLED HISTORICAL-FOLKLORIC NOVEL ABOUT A PALESTINIAN GIRL WHO DEVELOPS GREAT HEALING SKILLS AND TRAVELS AROUND THE REGION, SOMETIMES DRESSED AS A MAN Sonia Nimr’s award-winning Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands is a richly imagined feminist-fable-plus-historical-novel that tells an episodic travel narrative, like that of the great 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, through the eyes of a clever and irrepressible young Palestinian woman. The story begins hundreds of years ago, when our hero—Qamr—is born as an outcast, at the foot of a mountain in Palestine, near her father’s strange, isolated village. Qamr’s mother must solve the mystery of why only boys are born in this odd, conservative village. Then, in 1001 Nights style, this tale moves into another. Qamr’s parents die and a prince with many wives wants to marry her. Qamr takes her favorite book, Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, and flees through Gaza, to Egypt, where she is captured, enslaved, and sold to the sister of the mad king in Egypt. After escaping, she flees to study with a polymath in Morocco. But when it’s discovered she’s a girl, she must leave again, disguising herself as a boy pirate to sail the Mediterranean. Through all her fast-paced battles, mysteries, and adventures, Qamr never finds a home, but she does manage to create a family.

This book bridges the fields of Children’s Literature and Italian Studies by examining how turn-of-the-century children’s books forged a unified national identity for the new Italian State. Through contextualized close readings of a wide range of texts, Truglio shows how the 19th-century concept of recapitulation, which held that ontogeny (the individual’s development) repeats phylogeny (the evolution of the species), underlies the strategies of this corpus. Italian fairy tales, novels, poems, and short stories imply that the personal development of the child corresponds to and hence naturalizes the modernizing development of the nation. In the context of Italy’s uneven and ambivalent modernization, these narrative trajectories are enabled by a developmental melancholia. Using a psychoanalytic lens, and in dialogue with recent Anglophone Children’s Literature criticism, this study proposes that national identity was constructed via a process of renouncing and incorporating paternal and maternal figures, rendered as compulsory steps into maturity and modernity. With chapters on the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the Orientalized depiction of the South, and the role of girls in formation narratives, this book discloses how melancholic itineraries produced gendered national subjects. This study engages both well-known Italian texts, such as Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio and De Amicis’ Heart, and books that have fallen into obscurity by authors such as Baccini, Treves, Gianelli, and Nuccio. Its approach and corpus shed light on questions being examined by Italianists, Children’s Literature scholars, and social and cultural historians with an interest in national identity formation.

When D. H. Lawrence wrote his classic study of American literature, he claimed that youth was the “true myth” of America. Beginning from this assertion, Emily A. Murphy traces the ways that youth began to embody national hopes and fears at a time when the United States was transitioning to a new position of world power. In the aftermath of World War II, persistent calls for the nation to “grow up” and move beyond innocence became common, and the child that had long served as a symbol of the nation was suddenly discarded in favor of a rebellious adolescent. This era marked the beginning of a crisis of identity, where literary critics and writers both sought to redefine U.S. national identity in light of the nation’s new global position. The figure of the adolescent is central to an understanding of U.S. national identity, both past and present, and of the cultural forms (e.g., literature) that participate in the ongoing process of representing the diverse experiences of Americans. In tracing the evolution of this youthful figure, Murphy revisits classics of American literature, including J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, alongside contemporary bestsellers. The influence of the adolescent on some of America’s greatest writers demonstrates the endurance of the myth that Lawrence first identified in 1923 and signals a powerful link between youth and one of the most persistent questions for the nation: What does it mean to be an American?

This book places children's literature at the forefront of early twentieth-century debates about national identity and class relations that were expressed through the pursuit of leisure. Focusing on stories about hiking, camping and sailing, this book offers a fresh insight into a popular period of modern British cultural and political history.