New Directions in Children's Gothic

Childrens literature today is dominated by the gothic mode, and it is in childrens gothic fictions that we find the implications of cultural change most radically questioned and explored. This collection of essays looks at what is happening in the childrens Gothic now when traditional monsters have become the heroes, when new monsters have come into play, when globalisation brings Harry Potter into China and yaoguai into the childrens Gothic, and when childhood itself and childrens literature as a genre can no longer be thought of as an uncontested space apart from the debates and power struggles of an adult domain. We look in detail at series such as The Mortal Instruments, Twilight, Chaos Walking, The Power of Five, Skulduggery Pleasant, and Cirque du Freak; at novels about witches and novels about changelings; at the Gothic in China, Japan and Oceania; and at authors including Celia Rees, Frances Hardinge, Alan Garner and Laini Taylor amongst many others. At a time when the energies and anxieties of childrens novels can barely be contained anymore within the genre of childrens literature, spilling over into YA and adult literature, we need to pay attention. Weird things are happening and they matter.