Into the Wild Childhood: A Study of Wildness in Three 21st-Century Picturebooks
Abstract
While the majority of the ‘wild’ children’s literature presents male human characters, in the 21st century, there is an increasing tendency to publish texts showing a different kind of wildness. In this article, the author analyses three picturebooks published in the 21st century that feature protagonists other than male and/or human: a wild girl (Wild by Emily Hughes, 2012), a pet dog (Such a Good Boy by Marianna Coppo, 2020), and a wild tiger (Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown, 2013). She investigates to what extent (if any) non-male and/or non-human wildness in these works differs from the most popular one in children’s literature. The author analyses the concept of wildness in the context of a famous children’s picturebook featuring a wild protagonist, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (1963), and other cultural texts using this motif.
Keywords
animals; boys; children’s literature; gender; girls; Emily Hughes; Marianna Coppo; Maurice Sendak; Mr Tiger Goes Wild; Peter Brown; picturebooks; Such a Good Boy; Where the Wild Things Are; Wild; wildness
Supporting Agencies
The research results presented in this paper have been obtained within the project “Our Mythical Childhood… The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges” led by Prof. Katarzyna Marciniak at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw, with funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme – ERC Consolidator Grant (Grant Agreement No 681202).
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University of Warsaw Poland
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