Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy depicts a world of precarity. Through her construct of the authoritarian Capitol, Collins outlines a particular brand of totalitarian rule that operates not predominantly through fear, as might typically be expected within dystopian fiction, but through denying its citizens the opportunity to form trust bonds. Key to this strategy is the Capitol’s manipulation of foodways: both actual foodstuffs, and the cultural and political systems surrounding their acquisition and consumption. Reading the trilogy and its foodways through the lens of trust theory, this article argues for a new interpretation of Collins’s dystopia. Exploring the shifting control of food in The Hunger Games enables us to witness the micro-negotiations and transitions of trust that take place within the trilogy, which are closely linked to its emphasis on embodiment, community, and self-knowledge. The close connection between such negotiations and the figure of the child or adolescent, and the cultural work he or she is invoked to perform, suggests the significant value of trust as a critical tool through which we might nuance the operations of dystopian and utopian modes within the young adult novel.

This article considers the young witch figure in three recently published children’s visual texts: Phoebe Wahl’s picturebook Little Witch Hazel: A Year in the Forest (2021) , Kat Leyh’s graphic novel Snapdragon (2020) , and Wendy Xu’s graphic novel Tidesong (2021) . Witches in children’s literature are often associated with the idea of liminality, but their liminality between nature and culture has received less scholarly attention. Delineating young witches and their interconnection with the natural world, the selected texts demonstrate the young witch figure’s relationships with different aspects of nature: the forest, the wild animals living in it, those living in urban areas, and those living in the sea. Reading the visual texts through Donna Haraway’s posthumanist theory and Lawrence Buell’s ecocritical framework, this paper argues that there is an emerging trend within children’s literature: stories about young witches now tend to depict how girls develop or strengthen their recognition of and respect for the subject status of wild animals and the environment.

In an age of unprecedented ambiguity and uncertainty, children must develop critical thinking skills to navigate a complex and ever-changing world. Interactive narratives such as metafiction offer a powerful tool for cultivating these skills. This article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue, which emphasizes the intersubjective nature of meaning-making, to analyze two metafictive children’s novels— The Bad Beginning (2001) by Daniel Handler, and The Name of This Book Is Secret (2018) by Raphael Simon—to explore how metafictive elements in these children’s novels can foster dialogues and encourage dialogic thinking. Through a close reading of these novels, this study examines how metafictive elements, such as direct address to the reader, the subversion of traditional narrative conventions, and the inclusion of playful and interactive elements, encourage readers to question assumptions. By transforming the reading experience into a collaborative process of meaning-making, these novels not only entertain but also empower young readers to become active participants in a dynamic and ever-evolving dialogue with the text and the world around them. This research contributes to a growing body of scholarship that explores the unique potential of metafiction to cultivate critical thinking, creativity, and a lifelong love of reading in children.

The 2018 original cast of Frozen: The Broadway Musical included Black performer Aisha Jackson as the alternate for the role of Anna. I argue that Jackson’s live performances as Anna, from 2018 to 2020, celebrate Black artistry and Black girlhood, enabling Black fan communities to see themselves mirrored in a Disney Princess, even one not originally written as Black. The significance of spotlighting Jackson’s embodiment of Princess Anna grows from the extended invisibilization of Blackness in youth narratives. Jackson’s performances as Anna allow for a Black main character and a Black artist/creator to be visibilized in the Frozen franchise. This article strives to centre and archive Black performance and contextualize Frozen: The Broadway Musical as an afro-fabulative affiliate of Black Broadway. I turn to Tavia Nyong’o’s articulations of afro-fabulation to read Black performance through Black performance scholarship, and I understand afro-fabulation’s insistent presencing of Blackness as an example of bringing the dark fantastic onto centre stage and into the spotlight.

In this article, the author explores how A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge (2012 ) disrupts prevailing assumptions about gender, language, and social forces. Through the genre of young adult (YA) dystopian fantasy, Hardinge subverts and interrogates the ideologies that shape reality. Using close textual analysis, the author investigates how A Face Like Glass uses the quest motif to present the liminality of the protagonist, Neverfell, as she leaves her childhood behind and ventures toward her new and unknown future. Applying language theory, feminist poststructuralism, and YA scholarship, the author considers how the notion of the outsider is troubled and dominant norms are challenged, particularly through the novel’s extensive metaphorical language. Through the character of Neverfell, Hardinge reflects how the construction of subjectivity is fluid and continually in process, much like discourse itself.

This article presents results from a larger study of so-called author schools for children in Denmark. The focus is to explore children’s articulations of “freedom” or being “free” when writing stories and poetry in these author schools, which are free-time fiction-writing activities taught and mentored by professional adult authors. In an analysis of selected excerpts of empirical material, the article connects children’s notions of freedom to theoretical conceptualizations of agency from both childhood studies and rhetoric. The empirical method is explorative and ethnographic, guided by the following research questions: What characterizes children’s experiences of being “free” as writers in the context of Danish author schools, and how can these experiences be understood and conceptualized in terms of agency? To address these questions, the article elaborates on four aspects of children’s perceived agency: (a) kinship as a foundation for agency, (b) agency as relational dynamics in the instructional context, (c) agency as the significance of individual choice of expression, and (d) agency as the drive toward affecting a possible reader. This study is anchored in children’s literature research through the interest in children as authors, their production of texts, and the specific context around these texts. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, it contributes with empirically grounded knowledge about children’s perspectives on “freedom” and agency in writing within the context of author schools for children. Second, it discusses how and why an interdisciplinary theoretical approach to agency is necessary for understanding and generating this knowledge about child authors and their perspectives.