Overview

Seriously Playful is a collection of essays reflecting the interdiscursive nature of children's literary criticism.

Originally presented as papers at the 5^th Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research Conference (Brisbane, 2001), the essays draw upon a range of critical theories, including theories of performativity and performance; linguistics; gender studies; literary studies; semiotics and art criticism; postcolonial theory; queer theory and film aesthetics.

The contributors interpret the theme through a remarkable performance across a diversity of children's texts and genres: poem, song, novel, picture book, computer games, and film.

Using sub-sections Words and Pictures; Gender and Race; Space and Time; Fun and Games, the end result is a seriously playful approach to textual analysis which is both stimulating and entertaining.

Proudly published by PostPressed

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part 1: Words and Pictures

• Chapter 1 'The Play's the Thing: The Ludic and the Ludicrous in Poetry for Children
  Morag Styles
• Chapter 2 Voice and Authority: Poetry by Young People in a New Zealand Newspaper in the 1980s
  Jill Holt
• Chapter 3 Performing Picture books
  Elizabeth Parsons
• Chapter 4 The Three Little Pigs and the Arts of Playfulness
  Linda Knight
• Chapter 5 Old Tale for New People: An Indonesian Curse Folktale Retold for Children
  Clara Evi Citraningtyas
• Chapter 6 Words, Rhyme, Rhythm and Song
  Jennifer Rumsey

Part 2: Gender and Race

• Chapter 7 Performance of Colour: Narratives of Passing in Contemporary Settler-Colony texts
  Clare Bradford
• Chapter 8 Mum's the Word: Mother as a Poetic and Pregnant Signifier
  Vivienne Muller
• Chapter 9 Funny Boys Make Strange Men: Male-to-Female Cross-Dressing in Children's Literature
  Victoria Flanagan
• Chapter 10 No Exit: Performing Masculinity
  Roderick McGillis
• Chapter 11 Feeling a Little Queer?: Performing Lesbian Desire and Identity in Youth Texts
  Kerry Mallan
• Chapter 12 Moving Bodies
  Anita Jetnikoff

Part 3: Space and Time

• Chapter 13 Revitalising the Past with the Present in Arthurian Retelling for Children
  Emma Yarrow
• Chapter 14 Playing in Deadly Earnest: Phillip Pulman and the Endangered Child
  Lisa O'Connor
• Chapter 15 Performing Difference: Young Adult Literature Post September 11
  Jo Lampert
• Chapter 16 Performing the Past: Language and Ideology in Selected Historical Novels of Katherine Paterson
  Paul March
• Chapter 17 Talking in Hobbit Tongue: The Lord of the Rings and Fantasies of language
  Susan Carson
• Chapter 18 The Space of Play in the Novels of David Almond
  Anna Smith
• Chapter 19 Performing Adolescence: Winners and Losers
  Diana Hodge

Part 4: Fun and Games

• Chapter 20 When Harry Met Lara: Performing the Quest in Blockbuster Films for young People
  Sharyn Pearce
• Chapter 21 'Doing Serious Work or Just Playing?': Computer Games and Pleasure in Subject English
  Donna McGrath
• Chapter 22 Playing Adrian Mole: Parody and Performative Adolescence
  Heather Scutter
• Chapter 23 Children's Play as Subversive Activity
  Jeri Kroll
• Chapter 24 The Harry Potter Challenge of Children's Literature
  Jo Coward
• Chapter 25 Performing Politics: Children as Conscience
  Margot Hillel

About the Contributors
Index