AustLit

'Books with evil children as main protagonists can be disturbing, even more so when they appear in literature targeted at children and young adults. Very often these evil characters provide an emotional counterpoint to positively represented characters and generate antipathetic feelings. The main protagonist in Liar is Micah Wilkins, who lives with her family in New York. Told from her point of view, the story moves between the present, which focuses on her everyday life at high school, and the past, which relates Micah's family history and how she met her boyfriend. As with the acquisition of empathy, cognitive psychologists distinguish at least four developmental stages. Cognitive empathy is the capacity to understand another's mental state or perspective. Lying is closely connected to moral issues and ethical debates focusing on whether all lying is wrong, as in the case of prosocial lies, such as polite lies and white lies.'

'This volume focuses on the (de)canonization processes in children’s literature, considering the construction and cultural-historical changes of canons in different children’s literatures. Chapters by international experts in the field explore a wide range of different children’s literatures from Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Eastern and Central Europe, as well as from Non-European countries such as Australia, Israel, and the United States. Situating the inquiry within larger literary and cultural studies conversations about canonicity, the contributors assess representative authors and works that have encountered changing fates in the course of canon history. Particular emphasis is given to sociological canon theories, which have so far been under-represented in canon research in children’s literature. The volume therefore relates historical changes in the canon of children’s literature not only to historical changes in concepts of childhood but to more encompassing political, social, economic, cultural, and ideological shifts. This volume’s comparative approach takes cognizance of the fact that, if canon formation is an important cultural factor in nation-building processes, a comparative study is essential to assessing transnational processes in canon formation. This book thus renders evident the structural similarities between patterns and strategies of canon formation emerging in different children’s literatures.'