Childhood under threat in Robert Swindells's brother in the land and stone cold

Abstract

The paper examines the construction of childhood in two prize‐winning books in children's literature, namely Brother in the Land and Stone Cold, both by Robert Swindells. In so doing it demonstrates the relationship between the sociological phenomenon recognised as the ‘death of childhood’ or the ‘end of childhood’ and the tendency to represent so‐called ‘gritty’ reality, which is present in contemporary British children's literature. The ‘death of childhood’, as characterised by Chris Jenks, for example, refers to anxiety over the changing concept of childhood from the legacy of Romanticism, envisioning childhood as a state of innocence, to a disturbing image of childhood as a state under threat at the end of the 20th century. The romanticisation of childhood has served as a justification for the exclusion of particular subjects from children's fiction in adult discourse, such as, for example violence, poverty, abuse, neglect, family breakdown, or homelessness. Swindells breaks this convention by dealing with, for example, homelessness (Stone Cold) and the threat of nuclear war (Brother in the Land). Acknowledging these subjects ‐formerly the preserve of adults ‐ in literature designated for young readers might be linked, the paper suggests, to the shift in the understanding of the concept of childhood at the end of the 20th century.