Children's books and child readers

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This volume results from an international collaboration of scholars from Germany, Austria, Italy, South Africa, and Russia, focusing on children's literature in English. The studies critically evaluate the "imagined" children and their evolving worlds and cultures as represented in literary discourse. Contributors explore how ideology and aesthetics intertwine to create meaning for both children and adults, often in distinct ways. The selected texts span from the Victorian to Edwardian eras, as well as postmodern and postcolonial literature. They include works such as Mary and Charles Lamb's *Mrs. Leicester's School*, Evelyn Sharp's fairy tales, Thomas Hughes's *Tom Brown's Schooldays*, Rudyard Kipling's *Stalky & Co.*, G. K. Chesterton's poems and fairy tales, Edith Nesbit's *Five Children and It*, Kenneth Grahame's *The Wind in the Willows*, J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Hobbit*, Enid Blyton's school stories, J.K. Rowling's *Harry Potter* series, and contemporary works by Joan Aiken, Diana Wynne Jones, Anne Fine, Roald Dahl, Philip Pullman, Gerard Whelan, and David Almond, along with significant contributions from South African children's literature. The volume employs the concept of "construction" as a theoretical and methodological framework, positing that our understanding of childhood is shaped by various philosophical, educational, psychological, social, cultural, and religious influences, with childhood in literature construct