Evil Children in the Popular Imagination [Hardcover]

Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, Karen J. Renner argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. From novels to music videos, photography to video games, the evil child haunts a range of texts and comes in a variety of forms, including changelings, ferals, and monstrous newborns. In this book, Renner illustrates how each subtype offers a different explanation for the problem of the evil child and adapts to changing historical circumstances and ideologies.

AcknowledgementsEvil Children is an encyclopedic survey of the supernatural and supernormal young that haunt our popular culture. & her book is a terrific resource for childhood scholars who may want to research and teach representations of the bad and the ugly alongside the good. (Adam Golub, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 11 (2), 2018)

Karen J. Renner is Lecturer of English at Northern Arizona University, USA. She is the editor of The 'Evil' Child in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (2012) and the author of articles that have appeared in such journals as Frame: Journal of Literary Studies, Red Feather: An International Journal of Children's Visual Culture, and Film Studies: An International Review.

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