Complex Crossings: European Picture Books and the Construct of Child-ness in National, European, and Global Contexts

Comparative approaches to children?s literature are the most appropriate for explorations of the interplay between sameness and difference that is so central in the global and European context. Employing such comparative approaches, Petros Panaou analyzes several works from the European Picture Book Collection, examining their constructs of child-ness in relation to the national, European, and global structures they support or subvert. The book examines the socio-political culture that was largely responsible for the imagining of modern nation-ness and child-ness, as well as for the inception of children?s literature in Europe, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It then analyzes several works from the European Picture Book Collection, examining the various ways in which globalization is currently influencing child-ness and children?s literature. Pedagogical and academic implications are also discussed. Complex Crossings should be useful to scholars and critics of children?s literature, librarians, educators, and anyone with an interest in European picture books and their relation to national identities, the European dimension, and globalization.