Roni Natov is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA. A multi-award winning teacher and scholar, she is the founding editor of The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature and her previous publications include The Poetics of Childhood (2005).

Natov pulls from a variety of children’s and young adult books, including Dahl’s Matilda, Myers’ Monster, and Selznick’s The Inventions of Hugo Cabret, to explore how diversity and difference, trauma, empathy, politics, and identity in literature can encourage young readers to engage with experiences both similar to and different from their own.

• Acknowledgments1. Landscapes of ChildhoodPastoral: the forest, the sky, and the riverInternal Landscapes, Private Spaces2. The Construction of the Creative Child3. The Freedom to Imagine: Childhood Creativity and Socialization in the Work of William Steig4. Imagining Difference and DiversityThe Picture Book and Life StoryDifference and the SpeciesThe Young Adult Novel and the Cultural “Other”5. Re-Imagining Fear and TraumaBearing WitnessArt, Creativity, and AgencyFear and DenialThe Role of Nature in Healing from Sexual Trauma The Trauma of Death: the Ultimate LossContextualizing Trauma: Beyond Individual Trauma- The Culture of Bullying- The Culture of Racism- The Culture of Domestic Violence6. New Heroes: New Visions of ChildhoodSetting the Stage: Alice, Jim Hawkins, Huck, and DorothyNew Heroes:- Girl Power: Pippi and Matilda- Children’s Ways of Knowing: Louise Erdrich’s Historical Fiction - The Child Writer Hero: Mina- Challenging Political and Social Institutions: King Matt and Totto-Chan- Stories of Community: a New Heroic7. Imagine Empathy: Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane8. New Ways of Imagining the Picture Book: States of Mind, States of FeelingShaun TanBrian SelznickPeter SisEpilogue: Surviving Childhood NotesWorks ConsultedPermissionsIndex