Beatrix Potter was one of the inventors of the contemporary picture book, and her small novels published at the turn of the twentieth century are still available and popular today. Writing in Code is the first book-length study of Potter's work, and it covers the entire oeuvre, examining all facets of her work in relation to her private life. Daphne Kutzer reveals the depth of the symbolism in Potter's work and relates this to the issues of the author's own development as an independent woman and writer, and her struggles with domesticity, Unitarianism, and the socio-political...

This book builds upon and contributes to the growing academic interest in feminism within the field of children's literature studies. Christie Wilkie-Stibbs draws upon the work of Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Lacan in her analysis of particular children's literature texts to demonstrate how a feminist analysis opens up textual possibilities that may be applied to works of children's fiction in general, extending the range of textual engagements in children's literature through the application of a new poststructural critical apparati.

Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism examines those fundamental themes which inform our understanding of "the teenager"-themes that emerge in both literary and cultural contexts. Models of adolescence do not arise solely from discourses of psychology, sociology, and education. Rather, these models-frameworks including developmentalism, identity formation, social agency, and subjectivity in cultural space-can also be found represented symbolically in fantastic tropes such as metamorphosis, time-slip, hauntings, doppelgangers, invisibility, magic gifts, and witchcraft....