Outside Child In and Out of the Book

<p><em>The Outside Child In and Out of the Book</em> is situated at the intersection between children’s literature studies and childhood studies. In this provocative book Christine Wilkie-Stibbs juxtaposes the narratives of literary and actual children/young adults to explore how Western culture has imagined defined and dealt with their outsider status – whether orphaned homeless refugee victims of abuse or exploited – and how processes of economic social or political impoverishment are sustained and naturalized in regimes of power authority and domination. </p><p>In five chapters titled: Outsider Displaced Erased Abject Unattached and Colonized the book situates and repositions a range of pre- and post-millennium children’s/young adult fictions autobiographies policy documents and reports in the current climate of rabid globalization new out-group definitions and prescribed normativity. Children’s/young adult fictions considered include: Malorie Blackman’s <em>Noughts and Crosses </em>trilogy; Mark Haddon’s <em>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; </em>Jacqueline Wilson’s <em>The Illustrated Mum</em>; Shyam Selvadurai’s <em>Funny Boy</em>; Ann Provoost’s <em>Falling; </em>Meg Rosoff’s<em> How I Live Now</em>; Elizabeth Laird’s <em>A Little Piece of Ground</em>. Autobiographical works include Zlata Filipovic’s <em>Zlata’s Diary</em>; Kevin Lewis’s <em>The Kid;</em> Latifa’s <em>My Forbidden Face;</em> and Valérie Zenatti’s <em>When I Was a Soldier</em>.</p>