29 April: London-based Children’s Literature event

The next event for the Children and the City series by ‘Children’s Literature/Children’s Lives’ and ‘The City Centre’ at Queen Mary, University of London, will be on Wednesday next week, with Jenny Bavidge and Aneesh Barai on London-based children’s literature.

Wednesday 29th April, 4.30pm-6.30pm
Queen Mary, University of London, Arts One, 1.36

Jenny Bavidge, “‘A Peep into London’: Children’s Guidebooks to London from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day”

This paper will discuss some early examples of guides to London produced for a juvenile audience in the form of chapbooks and, later, picture books. How are children introduced to the city and how are its wonder and horrors narrated by early and contemporary guidebooks?

Aneesh Barai, “Urban Children’s Literature in the Age of Modernism: Practical Catsand Billy and Beryl”

This paper will compare 1930s representations of London in the popular Billy and Beryl series of children’s books with T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. As even now people tend to believe that children are better suited to “natural”, open spaces rather than urban lives, how did writers in this time of mass urbanisation come to think of children’s space in the city?

Hope to see you there!

With best regards,

Aneesh and Kiera