Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

Emer O’Sullivan contributes to a revealing 
field of children’s literature. By comparing international publications she examines mutual 
influences, concurrences and national differences. This approach enables her to establish 
general, international elements of children’s literature on the one hand and individual, 
national features on the other hand.
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
edited an analysis of Current Trends in Comparative 
Children’s Literature
Research
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,
which compiles the main aspects of the comparative 
approach and its merits. Moreover, she has published an international encyclopedia of classic 
children’s literature.
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In contrast to other encyclopedias before, she does not simply include 
the traditional English classics, which admittedly constitute a large proportion, but explicitly 
draws up an international inventory. By collecting and making public the spectrum of 
children’s literature classics from all over the world, Kümmerling-Meibauer facilitates and 
encourages access to yet unfamiliar classics of other nations.
As most researchers and critics observe, the internationality of the genre’s literature 
and the academic exchange about it is reinforced by globalisation. Comparative studies of 
national literatures play an important role for the latter’s international classification and can 
support the formation of an international canon. However, it remains to be seen in how far the 
practice of canonisation will have to be adapted to today’s highly dynamic information 
society. The parameters of any such canon will have to be flexible and fast-reacting, which 
may appear to be a contradiction in terms. In Kinderliteratur, Kanonbildung und literarische 
Wertung
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Kümmerling-Meibauer inquires into those issues, offering new impulses. Only 
time can tell whether individualisation, standardisation and globalisation are somehow 
compatible or whether new paths have to be trodden as far as expectations of quality, form 
and content, messages, but also
literary tools, theories and approaches are concerned. At 
present, desiderata are an international canon of children’s literature as well as an 
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Emer O’Sullivan. Kinderliterarische Komparatistik. Heidelberg: Winter, 2000.
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Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (Ed.) Current Trends in Comparative Children’s Literature Research. Bern: 
Lang, 1996.
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Kümmerling-Meibauer, Klassiker der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur.  
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Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. Kinderliteratur, Kanonbildung und literarische Wertung. Stuttgart; Weimar: 
Metzler, 2003.

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international poetics which take into account the current developments on the tide of 
globalisation. 
In summary it can be said that children’s literature is a fast-evolving field with a large 
potential. Having managed to emancipate itself, the genre has successfully defended itself 
against the prejudices of immaturity and triviality. The fact that it has been accepted into the 
academic apparatus and is being approached by means of high literature, i.e. “serious” 
theories, shows that children’s literature has overcome arbitrary restrictions and has grown up, 
so to speak. The increasing dissolving of borders and definitions necessitates new approaches 
which specialise on the emerging fringes, as is the case with crossover literature and 
allalderslitteratur
.
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Taking these latest developments in the field and its criticism as a starting point, the 
present study focuses on the intersection of British children’s literature and fantasy. In the 
following, we will endeavour to transfer some of the above-mentioned findings and impulses 
to this subgenre of children’s literature and to raise further issues. By selecting fantasy of all 
subgenres, we take up the challenge to examine an area which, by name, is the furthest away 
from “serious” reality. Yet it reveals the potential of current British
children’s fantasy very 
well through its progressiveness and innovativeness.
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The 1997 special issue of Children’s Literature deals with such border theories in detail. Sandra Beckett 
addresses the issue of fringe-areas and their criticism in children’s literature in Sandra Beckett (Ed.) Reflections 
of Change: Children’s Literature Since 1945
. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997, and crosswriting, 
bordercrossing in respect of target group, age and geography in Sandra L. Beckett (Ed.) Transcending 
Boundaries:
Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults. New York; London: Garland, 1999.

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