Ozzie Kids Flee the Garden of Delight: Reconfigurations of Childhood in Australian Children’s Fictions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2003vol13no2art1287Keywords:
Australian children's fiction, power relations, adults, children, cultural discourseAbstract
Popular texts such as Joanne Horniman's 'Sand Monkeys' and Odo Hirsch's trilogy of 'Hazel Green' books are used to study the way childhood is conceptualised in contemporary Australian fiction for children, thus arguing that cultural discourses around children and childhood have shifted from an emphasis on adulthood and childhood as distinct and separate domains of experience. The shift is viewed as incorporating an increasing democratisation of power relations between adults and children, and an appreciation of the diversity of child populations.
Metrics
References
Ariès, Philippe (1962) Centuries of Childhood. London, Cape.
Aronson, Karin and Bengt Sandlin (1996) ‘The sun match boy and plant metaphors: A Swedish image of a 20th-century childhood,’ in. C. Philip Hwang, Michael E. Lamb and Irving E. Sigel (eds) Images of Childhood. New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bourdieu, Pierre (2001) Masculine Domination. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Cadden, Mike (2000) ‘Speaking to both children and to genre: Le Guin’s ethics of audience,’ The Lion and the Unicorn 24, 1: 128-142.
Cunningham, Hugh (1995) Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. New York and London, Longman.
Cunningham, Hugh (1998) ‘Histories of childhood’, The American Historical Review 103: 1195-1208.
Davies, Bronwyn (1989) Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Pre-school Children and Gender. St Leonards, Allen and Unwin.
Doonan, Jane (2001) ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ in Victor Watson (ed) The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books in English. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.751-2.
Franklin, Bob (2002) ‘Children’s rights and media wrongs: changing representations of children and the developing rights agenda,’ in Bob Franklin (ed)The New Handbook of Children’s Rights: Comparative Policy and Practice. London & New York, Routledge, pp.15-42.
Galbraith, Mary (2001) ‘Hear my cry: A manifesto for an emancipatory childhood studies approach to children’s literature.’ The Lion and the Unicorn 25 (2): 187-205.
Hirsch, Odo (1999) Hazel Green. St Leonards. Allen & Unwin.
Hirsch, Odo (2000) Something’s Fishy, Hazel Green. St Leonards, Allen & Unwin.
Hirsch, Odo (2001) Have Courage, Hazel Green. St Leonards, Allen & Unwin.
Hollindale, Peter (1997) Signs of Childness in the Children’s Books. Stroud, Glos, Thimble Press.
Horniman, Joanne (1992) Sand Monkeys. Norwood, SA, Omnibus Books.
Hunt, Peter (1994) An Introduction to Children’s Literature. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.
Kociumbas, Jan (1997) Australian Childhood: A History. St Leonards, Allen & Unwin.
Metcalf, Eva-Marie (1997) ‘The changing status of children and children’s literature.’ in Sandra Beckett (ed) Reflections of Change: Children’s Literature Since 1945. Westport Connecticut, Greenwood Press, pp.49-56.
Nodelman, Perry (1992) The Pleasures of Children’s Literature. New York and London, Longman.
Pennell, Beverley (2002) ‘Redeeming masculinity at the end of the second millennium: narrative reconfigurations of masculinity in children’s fiction.’ in John Stephens (ed) Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinities in Children’s Literature and Film. New York, Garland, pp.55-77.
Stephens, John (2000) ‘Children’s literature, text and theory: What are we interested in now?’ in Sue Clancy and David Gilbey (eds) Something to Crow About: New Perspectives in Literature for Young People. Wagga Wagga, Centre for Information Studies Charles Sturt University & ACLAR, pp.1-14.
Zipes, Jack (2002) ‘Series Editor’s Foreword,’ in John Stephens (ed) Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinities in Children’s Literature and Film. London & New York, Routledge, p.viii.
