From Colonialism to the Contemporary

"The compilation of this book has been carefully constructed to convey the essence of its title, From Colonialism to the Contemporary: Intertextual Transformation in World Children's and Youth Literature. In other words, the different chapters have been selected and ordered to illustrate the chronological effects surrounding the phenomenon of Children's and Youth Literature. While this selection of essays as a whole does not seek to provide an exhaustive historical analysis of literature surrounding and written for children, it does seek to highlight several points in time that will give the reader a sound understanding of certain shifts in ideology found in children's literature. "Furthermore, the focus of this book is multivalent and interconnecting. While historically tracing a few texts from around the world along a timeline, this book also seeks to convey the transformative and intertextual nature of these respective texts, thereby revealing that children's literature is not an isolated genre, but instead one that conveys-and is subject to-all the same ideologies as other genres of literature. Furthermore, it is important to note that these chapters highlight texts from around the world, as the title expresses. Therefore, the reader can see how audiences have responded to and transformed texts pertaining to such countries as India, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as regions like Western Europe and Scandinavia. Meta-narratively speaking, this book also reflects the multinational nature and audience of this book, with contributing scholars writing from and representing various parts of the world. Most importantly, the thread that ties all of these topics together is Transformation."