This volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children’s and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children’s own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children’s literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.

This open access book offers an array of educational perspectives aimed at fostering inclusive, multicultural, critical, dialogical, and sustainable approaches to developing children’s literature in university classrooms. Its core pillars—environmental children’s literature, ecocritical thinking, sustainable development, collaboration, and dialogic skills—lay the foundation for future professionals to be involved with literature in multiple and interdisciplinary ways. This book illustrates and encourages educational practices fostering critical, relational, and collaborative encounters and entanglements with multiple environments, materials, and matter.The many examples in this book are developed through various forms of collaboration between teacher educators and student teachers, between students and children’s literature, and in collaboration with different materials, spaces, bodies, sounds, and smells. It provides educators with a methodology for teaching children’s literature to students with a focus on topics related to sustainability, critical citizenship, and inclusion.

This volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children’s and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children’s own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children’s literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.

This volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children’s and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children’s own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children’s literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.

This open access book offers an array of educational perspectives aimed at fostering inclusive, multicultural, critical, dialogical, and sustainable approaches to developing children’s literature in university classrooms. Its core pillars—environmental children’s literature, ecocritical thinking, sustainable development, collaboration, and dialogic skills—lay the foundation for future professionals to be involved with literature in multiple and interdisciplinary ways. This book illustrates and encourages educational practices fostering critical, relational, and collaborative encounters and entanglements with multiple environments, materials, and matter.The many examples in this book are developed through various forms of collaboration between teacher educators and student teachers, between students and children’s literature, and in collaboration with different materials, spaces, bodies, sounds, and smells. It provides educators with a methodology for teaching children’s literature to students with a focus on topics related to sustainability, critical citizenship, and inclusion.

This volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children’s and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children’s own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children’s literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.