Around the world, children’s literature has been both an engine and a product of national and transnational processes of modernity/modernization, including the circulation of new philosophical, political, and educational ideas about childhood. As nations have sought to define themselves and their futures, they have often looked to an idealized child citizen—or a citizen imagined as childlike—as a symbol of innocence, potential, revolution, and innovation. At the same time, modern children’s literature and childhood reflect modern realities as much as ideals, and global/transnational movements as well as national ones. Children across the globe have participated in the modern world as learners, consumers, workers, activists, and creators. Modern children’s books reflect and are shaped by global circulation and adaptation, technological innovation, publishing markets, censorship laws, and educational policy.
With these complexities in mind, we invite papers that address the active role that children’s literature and children themselves have played—and continue to play—in modernity and modernization around the globe. We are particularly interested the roles that children and children's literature have played in different countries’ modernities; how/whether children's literature drives the process of global modernization; how modernity has created transnational relationships, collaborations, and movements around children’s literature; and how children’s literature and child activists react to the challenges that stem from modernity. We anticipate that this topic will allow for rich comparative and interdisciplinary conversations.