Table Lands

Abstract

Table Lands: Food in Children's Literature surveys food’s function in children’s texts, showing how the socio-cultural contexts of food reveal children’s agency through examining texts that vary from historical to contemporary, non-canonical to classics, the Anglo-American to multicultural traditions, including a variety of genres, formats, and audiences: realism, fantasy, cookbooks, picture books, chapter books, YA novels, and film. The first chapter tracks children’s cookbooks over 150 years to show how adults’ expectations change based on shifting ideologies of child capability. Subsequent chapters survey canonical authors. Social work theory, British rural and urban cultures, and poverty inform the analysis of the foodways that underlie Beatrix Potter’s animal tales. Investigating Jewish immigration and foodways, food manufacturing, and roadside/programmatic architecture reveals Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen as an immigrant Jewish and natively American work. A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books work as a künstlerroman; Mary Douglas’s semiotic analysis and the history of honey and bees show Pooh as a poet who celebrates food. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books contrast with Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark series: differing foodways showcase competing cultural and environmental values. The final chapters examine intersections of geography, history, and food in contemporary texts. Francesca Lia Block’s Dangerous Angels reflects Los Angeles culture. Disney•Pixar’s Ratatouille showcases French haute cuisine in its story of otherness. In One Crazy Summer and its sequels, Rita Williams-Garcia tracks the movement of African American internal diasporas, through southern foodways, soul food, and the Black Panthers’ breakfast program. Refugee Studies demonstrate how food is a primary signifier of the difficulties posed by forced migration in Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again.