Age in David Almond’s Oeuvre

A Multi-Method Approach to Studying Age and the Life Course in Children’s Literature

Vanessa Joosen, Michelle Anya Anjirbag, Leander Duthoy, Lindsey Geybels, Frauke Pauwels, Emma-Louise Silva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032439594
• eBook ISBN: 9781000934908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In recent decades, age studies has started to emerge as a new approach to study children's literature. This book builds on that scholarship but also significantly extends it by exploring age in various aspects of children's literature: the age of the author, the characters, the writing style, the intended readership and the real reader. Moreover, the authors explore what different theories and methods can be used to study age in children's literature, and what their affordances and limits are. The analyses combine age studies with life writing studies, cognitive narratology, digital humanities, comparative literary studies, reader-response research and media studies. To ensure coherence, the book offers an in-depth exploration of the oeuvre of a single author, David Almond. The aesthetic and thematic richness of Almond's works has been widely recognised. This book adds to the understanding of his oeuvre by offering a multi-faceted analysis of age. In addition to discussing the film adaptation of his best-known novel Skellig, this book also offers analyses of works that have received less attention, such as Counting Stars, Clay and Bone Music. Readers will also get a fuller understanding of Almond as a crosswriter of literature for children, adolescents and adults.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of acronyms
• Introduction
• 1 Counting Stars, discounting years? Life writing and memory studies
• 2 Social and material minds through the lens of cognitive narratology in Clay and Bone Music
• 3 “Weird, but lovely”: A digital exploration of age in David Almond’s oeuvre
• 4 An exploration of reader-response research through My Name Is Mina
• 5 Constructing age transmedially: Framing age in text and on screen in Skellig
• 6 Eating fire: Close reading David Almond as a crosswriter
• Appendix A: List of 100 most frequent words
• Appendix B: Scatterplots of character speech
• Appendix C: Lists of 40 most common verbs, possessions, and adjectives associated with child, adolescent, adult, and old adult characters
• Appendix D: The interview guide for My Name Is Mina
• Appendix E: Griet’s and Astrid’s stories
• Index