ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book is about stories. Most important, as this book aims to demonstrate, the underlying premises of civilization imbue the general culture as well as children's literature and, along with the socio-economic realities of the civilized paradigm, structure children's experiences non-uniformly across the globe. This fundamental premise of wildness knows the human animal as having been created or having evolved to be an insignificant speck yet, concomitantly, as vital a component of its biosystem as any other. Culture is the sum of practices, concepts, means of subsistence, and relationships to the environment. All living beings devise cultural strategies for subsistence that impact their socio-environmental economies and relationships, thereby affecting the world. Throughout the book, the term civilization refers to the social and material cultures that issue from a specific socio-environmental system.
