'I look at her shadowed shape, her eyes lit by street light. There, in the hot summer dark. I have some thing, some self-thing. An idiot’s pride. And it has a power.
'A book about cruising and being on the run without going anywhere. Raw, honest and devoid of soapboxes. A good book for boys.'(Publication summary)
Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction
Houndmills
:
Palgrave Macmillan
,
2009
Z1939201
2009
single work
criticism
Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction examines how fictional texts – picture books, novels, and films – produced for children and young adults are responding to the tensions and dilemmas that arise from new gender relations and sexual differences. The book discusses a diverse range of international children's fiction published between 1990 and 2008. Some of the key dilemmas that emerge are around the texts' treatment of romance, beauty, cyberbodies, queer, and comedy.
Mallan is concerned with what she sees as a key relationship between location and identity and the way 'subjectivity is shaped by movements in time' (p.7). The focus here is on children and young people who are displaced and/or exiled and find themselves removed from their 'homeland'. The notion of a solid identity is inextricably linked to ideas about place and for children this is usually the home and school which are inhabited and experienced on a physical, mental and emotional level. Furthermore, textual representations of spatiality and temporality are realized through the ways in which 'rules and codes of conduct are enforced and boundaries and bodies are materially inscribed' (p.14). Mallan's comprehensive analysis of Little Soldier (Ashley, 1999, English) and Idiot Pride (Zurbo, 1997, Australian) concludes that in both texts, '...[T]he spatial parameters of neighborhood, gang membership, ethnic and class allegiances and familial relationships are variously resisted, contested and confirmed within gendered and other discursive limitations' (p.14).
Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction
Houndmills
:
Palgrave Macmillan
,
2009
Z1939201
2009
single work
criticism
Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction examines how fictional texts – picture books, novels, and films – produced for children and young adults are responding to the tensions and dilemmas that arise from new gender relations and sexual differences. The book discusses a diverse range of international children's fiction published between 1990 and 2008. Some of the key dilemmas that emerge are around the texts' treatment of romance, beauty, cyberbodies, queer, and comedy.
Mallan is concerned with what she sees as a key relationship between location and identity and the way 'subjectivity is shaped by movements in time' (p.7). The focus here is on children and young people who are displaced and/or exiled and find themselves removed from their 'homeland'. The notion of a solid identity is inextricably linked to ideas about place and for children this is usually the home and school which are inhabited and experienced on a physical, mental and emotional level. Furthermore, textual representations of spatiality and temporality are realized through the ways in which 'rules and codes of conduct are enforced and boundaries and bodies are materially inscribed' (p.14). Mallan's comprehensive analysis of Little Soldier (Ashley, 1999, English) and Idiot Pride (Zurbo, 1997, Australian) concludes that in both texts, '...[T]he spatial parameters of neighborhood, gang membership, ethnic and class allegiances and familial relationships are variously resisted, contested and confirmed within gendered and other discursive limitations' (p.14).
