Children and Biography

de Kate Douglas

"The first study of life narratives produced for, about, and written by children, this book will examine the recent popularity of such auto/biographies and how they represent and encourage knowledge, environmental change, health crises, education, and personal and cultural development in youth readers. Beginning with a literary-historical overview and calling upon children's literature archives, Kate Douglas explores books for children about adults and animals designed to be formative, texts about notable young people and how they assert the value of children's lives, and also considers the perceived value of trauma narratives on child readers through analysis of youth refugee narratives. In addition to published, illustrated texts like Women in Science, Kate Pankhurst's Fantastically Great Women Who... books, Rebel Dogs, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, Kirsty Murray's Kids Who Did, My Beautiful Birds and The Journey, this book moves to look at work created by children such as testimonies from child asylum seekers, children's biographical art and 'Lockdown diaries' produced under lock-down during the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing these works alongside empirical studies into how such material is received by young people and how texts generated by children are perceived both by them and their parents, this book provides new knowledge on how such texts are produced and read. Comprehensive and original, Children and Biography, presents an ethical methodological framework for scholarly practice when reading, witnessing and analyzing children's life narratives so that future researchers might place children's voices and writing at the centre of future inquiries in ways that facilitate genuine agency for child authors."--