(Re)imagining the World [electronic resource] : Children's literature's response to changing times / edited by Yan Wu, Kerry Mallan, Roderick McGillis.

Contributors -- Introduction: The world is never too much with us -- 1. Reading: From Turning the Page to Touching the Screen -- 2. Knowledge: Navigating the Visual Ecology: Information Literacy and the ‘Knowledgescape’ in Young Adult Fiction -- 3. Consumption: The Appeal of Abundance in Bookspace and Playspace -- 4. Discovery: My Name is Elizabeth: Discovery in Children’s Literature -- 5. Childhoods: Childhoods in Chinese Children’s Texts: Continuous Reconfiguration for Political Needs -- 6. Imagination: Imaginations of the Nation: Childhood and Children’s Literature in Modern China -- 7. Migrancy: Rites of Passage and Cultural Translation in Literature for Children and Young Adult -- 8. Food: Changing Approaches to Food in the Construction of Childhood in Western Culture -- 9. Empathy: Narrative Empathy and Children’s Literature -- 10. Monsters: Monstrous Identities in Young Adult Romance -- 11. Memory: (Re)imagining the Past Through Children’s Literature -- 12. Future: Nan’s future expectation and her views on children’s literature -- Index.    .

(Re)Imagining the world: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times considers how writers of fiction for children imagine ‘the world’, not one universal world, but different worlds: imaginary, strange, familiar, even monstrous worlds. The chapters in this collection discuss how fiction for children engages with some of the changes brought about by new technologies, information literacy, consumerism, migration, politics, different family structures, cosmopolitanism, and new and old monsters. They also invite us to think about how memory shapes our understanding of the past, and how fiction engages our emotions, our capacity to empathize, our desire to discover, and what the future may hold. The contributors bring different perspectives from education, postcolonial studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, childhood studies, postmodernism, and the social sciences. With a wide coverage of texts from different countries, and scholarly and lively discussions, this collection is itself a testament to the power of the human imagination and the significance of children’s literature in the education of young people.  .