Investigating how ‘culture invents, or constructs, the child as a social object on its own terms’ (D'Alessio, 1990: 70) is a central project for many scholars of children and youth across disciplines. So too is clarifying the ways in which media serves as a powerful tool for shaping understandings of what constitutes childhood. Karen J. Renner's provocative book, Evil Children in the Popular Imagination, explores two interesting questions in this regard: (i) In what ways do cultural texts (books, films, television shows) portraying the ‘evil child’ operate as representations of the moral value of youth; and (ii) How are these representations shaped by larger understandings of childhood in the ‘popular imagination’ (i.e. the contexts in which they are produced)? The book begins by considering the uncanny nature of experiencing a child as not a child, rightly noting that it is often within these unfamiliar instances that the potential for terror is exploited by authors, filmmakers and television producers who make evil children the centre of their narratives. The book's main argument is that popular representations of the evil child predominantly cite supernormal or supernatural (here, read as external) sources for the child's wicked behaviours (children are rarely presented as inherently bad). Thus, while there may seem to be a pre-occupation with evil children in these cultural texts, in fact, ‘… the history of evil child narratives has largely been a series of efforts to confirm the essential innocence of children. The task is accomplished by the supernatural elements of the plot … that exculpate the child from responsibility for even the most heinous of deeds’ (7). Renner also notes that while the study of the representation of evil children may seem a somewhat salacious or trivial pursuit, it is actually quite important, because such representations may be amplified within society to ‘… act like modern-day parables … that can shape our perceptions and, in turn, our practices, our institutions, and our public policies’ (13). Chapters are organised around discourse analysis of several categories of evil child, including ‘monstrous births’, ‘gifted children’, ‘ghost children’, ‘possessed children’, ‘ferals’, and ‘changelings’. For example, representations of monstrous births are linked to male anxieties about reproduction laws shifting away from their favour; possessed children reflect fears about the vulnerabilities of children resulting from parenting failures; and changelings embody adult desires to control ‘the knowledge children gain and the way that knowledge is framed’ (153). Claims about the possible symbolism of each category of evil child are interesting to think about, especially as they highlight nuances in the ways that adults might construct the moral value of children. The choice to include feral children as victims of supernormal forces in different texts is thought-provoking. At the same time, the book misses some opportunities to expound on how these portrayals of the evil child are shaped by larger understandings of childhood beyond the author's own interpretations. For example, it is not always clear why certain time periods or locations of production are chosen for comparison or assumed to be related in each chapter, or why books may naturally be compared with films; the explanation for either choice would have shed important light on who is actually producing and consuming these representations and why. In addition, the book primarily analyses American books and films, but does not adequately qualify whether portrayals of evil children might function in the same ways outside of these sites of production. Third, there is little discussion about the ways in which the economic interests of those who produce or consume representations of evil children ultimately impact (or skew?) the qualities of those representations. A more central description of the methodology used to choose and examine selected texts and/or a concluding chapter engaging theories of cultural production would have perhaps better marked the scope of the book's arguments while more clearly delineating portrayals of the evil child as reciprocally and iteratively constructed by authors and audiences. Evil Children in the Popular Imagination will thus likely appeal more to researchers within certain disciplines than others. It clearly explores topics of semiotics familiar and interesting to English Literature colleagues. However, the book needs to much more effectively acknowledge and address those processes by which films, books and television act as agents of cultural production of childhood to communicate with a broader range of scholars of children and youth.