Children’s Literatures, Cultures, and Pedagogies in the Anthropocene

Terri Doughty was Professor of English literature at Vancouver Island University, Canada, for many years and is now a VIU Honorary Research Associate. She has published articles and book chapters on girl culture, intergenerational collaboration, and critical plant studies approaches to children’s multimodal texts. She is co-editor of Knowing Their Place? Identity and Space in Children’s Literature (2011). Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak is Associate Professor of Literature at the Institute of English Studies, the University of Wroclaw, Poland. She has published on child-led research, posthumanism, and new materialism and co-edited Rulers of Literary Playgrounds Politics of Intergenerational Play in Children’s Literature (2021), Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film (2021), Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships: Encounters of the Playful Kind (2021), and Children’s Cultures after Childhood (2023). Janet Grafton holds a PhD in Environmental Studies and teaches in the English Department at Vancouver Island University, Canada.Her teaching and research interests include the environmental humanities, food literacy, and children’s literature, and she has published a number of articles in these fields.

This wide-ranging collection of papers brings together children’s literature scholars, ecopedagogical theorists and practitioners, early childhood educators, anthropologists, and arts educators to generate a fascinating dialogue on childhood in the Anthropocene. Analyzing materials drawn from five continents, the collection presents a generous overview of current thoughts on more-than-human entanglements in the current moment. The collection tackles complex questions concerning matters such as the ethics of consumption and of hope. It draws heavily on Indigenous knowledge to build understandings of how humans might live response-ably alongside the rest of the living world.

• IntroductionCh. 1: Thinking with Children’s Cultures and Pedagogies in the Anthropocene - Terri Doughty (Vancouver Island University, Canada) with Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (University of Wroclaw, Poland) and Janet Grafton (Vancouver Island University, Canada)Section 1: Fictions of ConsumptionCh. 2: A Different Kind of Eco-text: Historical Entanglements with Children's Fiction – Janet Grafton (Vancouver Island University, Canada)Ch. 3: Rickety Puppies, a Cow Called UNICEF, and a Carrot with Healthy Eyes: More-than-human Teachers and the Malnourished Child – A. McCarthy (University of Canberra, Australia)Ch. 4: Worldhoods of Vulnerability: Eating and Parasiting (in) the Anthropocene - Emily Ashton (University of New Brunswick, Canada) and Audrey Aamodt (University of Regina, Canada)Section 2: Multispecies and Intergenerational KinshipsCh. 5: Making Kin in Moominvalley: An Ecocritical Reading of Tove Jansson’s Moomin Books - Hanna Dymel-Trzebiatowska (University of Gdansk, Poland)Ch. 6: Re-storying Plants: Plants as Friends, Metaphors, and Community in Trace Balla’s Landing with Wings - Melanie Duckworth (Østfold University College, Norway)Ch. 7: Swirling Safe-Space: Hope in Butterflies Belong Here (2020) - Nina Goga (Western Norway University for Applied Sciences, Norway)Section 3: Response-ability on Indigenous LandCh. 8: Beyond the Animacy Divide with We Are Water Protectors: A Guiding Story for Kin-making in Fraught Times - Kathleen Forrester (Simon Fraser University, Canada)Ch. 9: Response-able Encounters with The Lost Words - Jennifer MacDonald (University of Regina, Canada), Apooyak’ii/Tiffany Prete (University of Lethbridge, Canada), and Erin Spring (University of Calgary, Canada)Ch. 10: A Thousand Pictures: Learning to See with Tlingit Art - Melvin Nowicki (Independent Scholar)Ch. 11: Learning from the Kadars: How Children’s Literature Can Productively Navigate the Anthropocene - Vera Verboom (Independent Scholar)Ch. 12: Children’s Literature as an Act of Defiance: My Place and the Rejection of “Eurocentric” Environmental Ideals - Sarah Mokrzycki (Victoria University, Canada)Section 4: Eco-literacies, Ecopedagogies and More-than-human TeachersCh. 13: Gardening our Planet’s Future: Teaching Environmental Literacy and Praxis in the Literature Classroom - Tzina Kalogirou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece) and Eleni Mitsoula (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)Ch. 14: Becoming-with Dust and the More-than-human - Yanina Carrizo (RMIT University, Australia) and Daniel X. Harris (RMIT University, Australia)Ch. 15: “We Will Make Mountains Green” Mapping Climate Change Awareness and Action with the Children of the Indian Himalayan Region of Uttarakhand – Diti Vyas (Anant National University, India) and Nidhi Vyas (Independent Scholar)Ch. 16: Eco-literate Young People: Creative Community-engaged Research for Cultural and Social Sustainability - Amanda Wager (Vancouver Island University, Canada)Section 5: Intergenerational Hope in the AnthropoceneCh. 17: Generative (Re)Reading of Dystopian Young Adult Narratives – Andrea Casals Hill (Universidad Finis Terrae, Chile) Ch. 18: Grandmother Yarns: For the Children of the Anthropocene – Affrica Taylor (Canberra University, Australia)Ch. 19: Save the Chupacabras!: The Entwining of Social and Environmental Justice in Latinx Children’s and Young Adult Literature - Jesus Montaño (Baylor University, USA)Ch. 20: Speculating about Post-anthropocene Childhoods with Donna Haraway’s “The Camille Stories”: A Response from Children’s Literature and Culture Studies – Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (University of Wroclaw, Poland) and Macarena García González (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain)Index