Plants in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Melanie Duckworth is Associate Professor of English Literature at Østfold University College, Norway, where she teaches British, postcolonial, and children’s literature. Her research interests include Australian literature, plant studies, children’s literature, and ecocriticism, and she has published on Australian historical children’s fiction, Australian literature, ecofeminism, and contemporary poetry. Lykke Guanio-Uluru is Professor of Literature at Western Norway University and researches literature and ethics, particularly plant studies, ecocriticism, fantasy, and game studies. She is the author of Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature (2015) and multiple research articles, and co-editor of Ecocritical Perspectives on Children’s Texts and Cultures: Nordic Dialogues (2018).

"This ground-breaking volume makes an exceptionally compelling case for the relevance of critical plant studies to youth literature. Drawing from and extending perspectives from ancient Western and contemporary Indigenous philosophy, new materialist and posthumanist thought, and scientific discoveries of the communicative capacities of plants, the authors focus attention on the myriad ways the diverse literature of childhood, with its vivid depictions of sentient vegetal life, orients young readers toward or away from ethical human-plant relations. Engaging with global texts ranging from folklore to contemporary YA fantasies, child-authored poetry to Indigenous stories, picturebooks to middle grade fiction, this is essential reading for anyone interested in environmental humanities, ecopoetics, and children’s literature studies." Professor Karen Coats, University of Cambridge

• PrefaceIntroduction: Plants in Children's and Young Adult LiteraturePart I: Botanical FascinationsChapter 1 A Relational Poetics of Plant–Human Interactions: Contrasting the Picturebooks of Cicely Mary Barker and Elsa BeskowTerri DoughtyChapter 2 Stamens and Pistils in the Same Flower: Queer Posthuman Performativity of Plants in Finnish Fairy Tale "Pessi ja Illusia"Katri Aholainen Chapter 3 Aristotle on Plants: Life, Communion, and WonderHallvard J. FossheimPart II: Plants in Folklore and FantasyChapter 4 Come into the Garden, Alice: Rude Flowers, Dream-Rushes, Aphasic Woods, and Other Plants in Lewis Carroll’s Nonsense WorldsFrancesca Arnavas Chapter 5 Fern Blossom and Lilibala: Magical Plants in Serbian Children’s Fantasy FictionTijana Tropin and Ivana Mijić NemetChapter 6 Vegetal Magic: Agnieszka’s Journey to the Understanding of the Vegetal Other in Naomi Novik’s Uprooted Mónika RusvaiPart III: Arboreal EmbracesChapter 7 Arboreal and Maternal Desires: Trees and Mothers in recent Australian Middle-Grade FictionMelanie DuckworthChapter 8 Arboreal Entanglements: Childrenforest and Deforestation in Ecopoetry by ChildrenJustyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Charlotte van BergenChapter 9 "I felt like a tree lost in a storm"—The process of Entangled Knowing, Becoming, and Doing in Beatrice Alemagna’s Picturebook Un grande giorno di niente (2016)Nina GogaChapter 10 From Chamomiles to Oaks: Agency and Cultivation of Self-AwarenessAndrea Casals Hill and Alida Mayne-NichollsPart IV: Plant Agency and ActivismChapter 11 Vegetal Individuals and Plant Agency in Twenty-First Century Children’s LiteratureAnja HöingChapter 12 Vegetable Violence: The Agency, Personhood, and Rhetorical Role of Vegetables in Andy Griffiths’ and Terry Denton’s The 52-Storey Treehouse Lykke Guanio-UluruChapter 13 The Vegetal Modality of Resistance in Children’s Books by/for Indigenous Peoples in the PhilippinesJose Monfred C. SyJose Monfred C. Sy